Deanna Dikeman

Deanna Dikeman was born in 1954 in Sioux City, Iowa. She has photographed her midwestern family and surroundings since 1985, when she left a corporate job to try a photography class. She graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in Biology with Honors and Distinction, and an M.S. in Management. She received an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship in 1996, a Charlotte Street Foundation Fellowship in 2006, and the United States Artists Booth Fellowship in 2008. Deanna’s largest and longest photography project “Relative Moments” documented her parents and other family in her home town. That work led to 27 years of photographs of her parents waving goodbye to her as she left from visiting them. “A Photographer’s Parents Wave Farewell” was one of the top 25 stories of 2020 in The New Yorker. Her book Leaving and Waving was published by Chose Commune in 2021, after being short-listed for the MACK 2020 First Book Award. The book was a finalist for the 2021 Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award. Leaving and Waving received the 2021 Prix Nadar awarded by the Association Gens d’Images in France.