Embrace

Isolated in the confinements of her Los Angeles home during the covid lockdown, Rohina Hoffman takes a metaphorical journey of connecting her roots to food through the rituals of daily meals. In Embrace she combines two photographic projects. In Gratitude showcases the food she used to make dinners for her family. Generation 1.75 is a visual memoir of identity, belonging, and the complexities of acculturation.

For Hoffman, photographing family members holding dinner ingredients turned into a tool of expressing new deep gratitude for the food. She often thought of all the effort and the hands that had touched the produce before it ended up with her family. The food also became the means of connecting with her family members and reconnecting with her Indian roots in a more profound way. As part of Generation 1.5/1.75 (a term coined by Professor Ruben Rumbaut in 1969 to distinguish those who immigrate as children from their parents who immigrate as adults), Hoffman has struggled with issues of identity and the feeling of “Otherness”.

The photographs of food and family are seasoned with Hoffman’s poetry. Her essay, 'Not All Peacocks are Blue', both in English and Hindi, provides a deeper look into the photographer's background and serves as a bridge between the two projects. Embrace is a visual examination of how life’s simple pleasures expand the quality of human existence and how that expansion helps an individual to secure their identity.

Rohina Hoffman is an Indian-born American artist whose narrative work focuses on themes of identity, home, adolescence, and the female experience. Raised in New Jersey but now residing in California, Rohina received her BS in Neuroscience and MD both from Brown University. She also studied photography at the Rhode Island School of Design. Rohina published her first monograph Hair Stories with Damiani Editore (February 2019) accompanied by a solo exhibition at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School. Hair Stories is held in many public collections and university libraries. Her photographs have been exhibited widely in juried shows and in 2021 she was the winner of the Purchase Award with Atlanta Photography Group and several of her prints were acquired by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

Caleb Cain Marcus heads the design studio Luminosity Lab where he designs things, like books, and thinks about color and typography. His work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Museum. He has an MFA from Columbia University.

Paula Tognarelli recently retired as a cultural administrator and curator, working as the Executive Director of the Griffin Museum of Photography producing on average 54 exhibitions a year. She frequently reviewed at national and local portfolio events and jumpstarted hundreds of photographers’ careers. She holds an MS in Arts Administration from Boston University, BA from Regis College, is a graduate of the New England School of Photography, and is still on her never-ending journey for her Masters in Education from Lesley University.

Geeta Kothari is a senior editor of the Kenyon Review. Her essay “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” is widely taught in universities and has been reprinted in several anthologies, including in Best American Essays. She is the editor of ‘Did My Mama Like to Dance?’ and Other Stories about Mothers and Daughters, and the author of I Brake for Moose and Other Stories. Recent publications appear in Massachusetts Review and Off Assignment. She teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.