AVAILABLE TO ORDER

Signed, First Edition (2023)
Published by Schilt Publishing and Gallery (Amsterdam)
Hardbound
144 pages, 7.83 in X 10 in
Photographs and Poetry by Rohina Hoffman
Essays by Rohina Hoffman, Paula Tognarelli, and Geeta Kothari
Designed by Caleb Cain Marcus

ISBN 978 90 5330 954 4

In Embrace, Los Angeles based photographer Rohina Hoffman reflects on the theme of uncertainty while combining two of her photographic projects. In Gratitude, made during the pandemic, is a typology of portraits celebrating food and family and how we find comfort in times of unease. Generation 1.75 is a visual memoir of identity, belonging, and the complexities of acculturation.

As in her previous book Hair Stories, Hoffman uses text to accompany her photographs, this time incorporating poetry and prose. Several short poems are interspersed in the first half of the book and set a deliberate but delicate cadence, providing an additional layer of depth and emotion. An essay bridging both projects is translated into Hindi and transliterated.

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“Embrace is a visual and poetically scripted narrative tracing photographer Rohina Hoffman’s bridge between Indian and American cultures. Following her early, indulgent care by grandparents in India, she joined her immigrant parents in the United States at age four. In vibrantly saturated compositions, Hoffman uses traditional symbols of Indian life placed in American settings, juxtaposing visual elements and sometimes flipping the orientation of her images to invoke the internal challenges of assimilation. .. .Interestingly, Hoffman chose to begin Embrace with sumptuous photographs triggered by a contemporary psychological trauma, the Covid-19 pandemic. In this choreographed series, handheld offerings of fresh produce are made in delectable, wardrobe-coordinated photographs of individual family members. Her saturated squares isolate each torso, emphasizing the offering and the hands that make them, which fortifies their impact and emotional appeal. Like Hoffman’s assimilation series, these pictures center on the importance of symbols. In her graphically bold and inviting images, embellished by an alchemy of poetry and recipe, she conveys the promise of security and nourishment that both family and food provide…”

-Elin Spring, What will you remember?

“Photographer Rohina Hoffman explores aspects of her family heritage and its current reality through the nuanced, poetic contemplation of that most universal of languages: food. A metaphorical journey connecting her roots to daily rituals and family meals, sensitively designed by Caleb Cain Marcus, in Embrace, Hoffman, who also contributes writings in English and Hindi, combines two photographic projects—In Gratitude and Generation 1.75.Born in India in 1968, Rohina was raised by her grandparents until age 5, when she was reunited with her parents in America. Generation 1.75 is a poetic conversation about the intensely in-between identity of being neither first nor second generation, awash in memories of past places and other lives, but nevertheless thoroughly American. In Gratitude is much more concrete, but no less focused on family.”

- Shana Nys Dambrot, LA Weekly

“A comparable, even more personal sense of cultural duality informs the work of Rohina Hoffman. Born in India, she came to the United States at 5. She addresses cross-cultural concerns obliquely and with a winning lyricism. “Embrace” consists of work from two Hoffman projects, “Generation 1.75″ and “In Gratitude.” With the former, titles like “Upended” and “Transplant” allude to the state of sharing two cultures; while the sight of a handful of turmeric or a forking tree trunk does so visually.“In Gratitude” offers a simple recurring motif: a person seen from the waist up and neck down holds a vegetable or fruit or bouquet of flowers. With no faces seen, the emphasis is on the relationship between the human and vegetative. The images are very attractive — in association no less than appearance — and so much so that it’s easy to overlook the basic fact that these beets and avocados and flowers all have in common. They’ve been plucked or uprooted.”

- Mark Feeney, The Boston Globe