Roni Hoffman

Artist and photographer

For an artist whose greatest fascination has been reserved for the small and quiet, it’s been a loud, wild ride — from a first group show with Yoko Ono to a photo career shooting rock stars.

She's earned a gold record for designing a Blue Öyster Cult album. She’s photographed Elvis Presley, Muddy Waters, Patti Smith, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Jerry Garcia, the Clash. She shot the back cover of The Dictators Go Girl Crazy, the first punk album. As a teenage photog in 1967, she was there when Jimi Hendrix’s helicopter landed on the Pan Am (now Met Life) building upon his return from London. She has shared a joint with Jim Morrison and sangria with Charles Mingus. Her picture of her next-door neighbor Lester Bangs is the cover of his biography. More photos are included in the doc, Creem: America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine. Twenty-eight of Roni’s photos of Alex Chilton lead off the film Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me.

As a fine artist, she likes to work small. Most of the work in this portfolio is no larger, edge to edge, than 8 x 10 inches. This reflects her lifelong attraction to life's secret corners, as well as her enduring aversion to art that's overblown. She paints and draws in a variety of media, including gouache, watercolor, oils, pastel, pencil, charcoal, paper, wood, metal, bamboo and collage.

Her latest work is a collection in painting, drawing and collage entitled 99 Turtles, celebrating the intrepid shell-dwellers discovered under the mud and debris following the Great Flood of 1966 in Florence. It is the theme of her upcoming show at Gospel Flat gallery in Bolinas, CA (opening November 7, 2026 — and all are invited). Roni’s work was included in the Brooklyn Museum exhibit about New York’s legendary JAM Gallery, site of her first solo show, and in the Museum of the City of New York show, New York at its Core. She has had a solo show at Jacqueline Anhalt in LA and been part of many group shows. In 2023, the Gospel Flat gallery mounted a retrospective showing her paintings and drawings alongside her photography.

Roni Hoffman was raised in Coney Island (the favicon in the browser tab is the H from the Wonder Wheel sign) and, at Lincoln High School, studied under Leon Friend, who invited her to join his famous Art Squad. She earned her BFA at Hunter College in Manhattan. She lives now in the Bay Area and is married to Robert Duncan, a former editor of Creem. They have two children, a daughter, who is a writer, published poet and mother of two, and a son, the former publisher of Vice Russia, now a writer and sommelier in Detroit.