Leaving and Waving

Having started with an innocuous photograph during a goodbye-moment, Deanna Dikeman continued to take a photograph of her parents for 27 years each time she waved farewell after visiting them. The photographs, having quickly become a sort of ritual, are hasty-seeming snapshots of her mom and dad standing together waving back at Dikeman as she drives away with her car. The photographs continue, the seasons change, the parents grow older, at one point it is only the mother waving back, smiling and waving, until eventually Dikeman takes one last picture of an empty drive. With her exploration of family, time and how to deal with the knowledge of the inevitable final goodbye, Dikeman created a brilliant, pretension-free photographic work that touches deep.

“I started in 1991 with a quick snapshot, and I continued taking photographs as a way to deal with the sadness of leaving. It gradually turned into our goodbye ritual, and it seemed natural to keep the camera busy, because I had been taking pictures every day while I was there.”
― from Deanna Dikeman’s afterword