‘27 years of goodbyes’ thrust Kansas photographer to unexpected international acclaim
Deanna Dikeman never imagined she would be here.
Not when she was growing up in Sioux City, Iowa. Not while studying biology at Purdue University or spending one year in medical school at the University of Iowa. And certainly not when, using a master’s degree in management she had earned at Purdue, she worked for United Telecom (which became Sprint) in Kansas City.
Even after she found her true passion — photography — Dikeman’s dreams didn’t go this far.
“I plugged along for years, and all of a sudden I guess I got discovered,” the 70-year-old Mission resident said.
Thanks to her deeply personal photo exhibition “Leaving and Waving,” Dikeman’s work has been seen around the world. She was featured in one-person shows in London, Budapest, Paris and five cities in Italy, and she has shown at festivals in Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, Belgium, France and Saudi Arabia.
All since 2021.
The New Yorker magazine and the British Journal of Photography are among the many publications that have written about her.
BuzzFeed News included “Leaving and Waving” in its “9 Photo Stories That Will Challenge Your View of the World.”
She won a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in 2023.
ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” featured Dikeman in its “America Strong” segment at the end of its Nov. 14 broadcast.
It’s all a bit overwhelming.
“Every once in a while I kind of go, you know the phrase, ‘Pinch me, is this real?’” she said. “That’s kind of the way I felt. Honestly, I worked almost 30 years taking these pictures with no idea that this would happen.”
The title “Leaving and Waving” is as simple as the concept. Dikeman took photos of her parents, Gerald and Pat Dikeman, waving goodbye as she was leaving from holiday visits and other family gatherings at their home in Sioux City.
Dikeman, who has lived in Columbia, Missouri, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as well as Kansas City, typically snapped the photos through her car window as Gerald and Pat stood in their driveway. The images begin in 1991 and run through 2017.
“So that’s 27 years of goodbyes.”
The start of the project
She had always photographed her parents — including for a wider exhibition called “Relative Moments,” which has shown throughout the region — but she took her first snapshot of them waving goodbye while visiting from Baton Rouge. She had moved there in 1990 when her husband took a job at Louisiana State University.
“I think it was when I lived in Louisiana that I realized how Midwestern I was,” Dikeman said. “All of a sudden, the Midwest looked interesting.”
Her parents came to be willing subjects.
“I was taking so many pictures of them that one more picture when I left was no big deal. They didn’t care. They just got used to it eventually. I just always had my camera.
“I think at one point, it was 17 or 18 years into it, that I saw this stuff and I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, look what I’ve started.’”
The first showing of “Leaving and Waving” was at the Charlotte Street Foundation’s La Esquina Gallery in August 2018. She created a photobook that was among 10 finalists of a 2020 competition in London called the Mack First Book Award.
Then The New Yorker learned of Dikeman and her photos, running a piece that became one of the magazine’s top 25 stories of 2020.
“Once that happened, then everybody started looking at it,” she said. “And it was the beginning of the pandemic, so people were at home, and I think my story resonated because it was about waving goodbye. It was about being apart.
“I think in some ways it touched a nerve then, and that’s when I got the first show in Italy. And there was another show in France. The Europeans reached out immediately. They called. They wanted to show it. I was surprised. Pleasantly surprised.”
Phenomenon spreads
The “Leaving and Waving” phenomenon surged further when somebody posted the photos online — without Dikeman’s permission and without licensing them. They went viral on Instagram, Reddit, TikTok and Facebook and caught the attention of ABC, which introduced her photos to an even wider audience.
The network did pay a licensing fee, which is pretty much the only income Dikeman makes on the photos.
Those shows in Europe? Some pay an artist’s fee of a few hundred dollars, but most pay nothing. And when Dikeman travels overseas to see her works exhibited, it’s out of her own pocket.
In essence, she loses money on the deal.
“Most of the places in Europe print it there, hang it up on the festival walls or whatever, and destroy it afterward,” Dikeman said. “I don’t print it as a fine art print. I don’t sign it.”
Signed copies of her works are available in Kansas City at Haw Contemporary gallery. A French publisher has produced three printings of her “Leaving and Waving” photobook, all of which sold out, and is considering a fourth printing. Only one copy, now considered a collectible, is listed on Amazon — at $400.
On the other hand, a 304-page book of her larger project “Relative Moments” was published in April and is available for 58 euros (about $61).
That book was among Vanity Fair’s May list of “14 Books We Can’t Stop Thinking About This Month.”.
Among its praises:
“Dikeman’s emphasis on domestic routines says that it’s not just the major milestones that make up our family story — in fact, not a single wedding or graduation appears — but the repetition of small, daily actions that creates meaningful connections and comfort over our lifetimes.”
‘It’s quite touching’
Dikeman said working on the books was difficult at times because it conjured up memories of her always-supportive parents. She credits her father, who died in 2009, with sparking her interest in photography by buying her a Brownie camera when she was young.
Despite her early interest, Dikeman didn’t consider photography as a possible career until after she had taken those detours through biology, medical school and management. That’s when she took a photography class at Johnson County Community College.
“And it was the first time I found something that I just couldn’t stop doing,” she said. “I just loved it. I mean, I was 31 years old. I guess I kept looking for something to find my meaning in life.”
Now, she not only has meaning in her life, she also is helping others find it in theirs. People around the world have contacted her after seeing “Leaving and Waving.”
“It’s really sweet. Everybody sees these pictures, and then they reach out and tell me how much it meant to them because they used to do this, too. Or they just lost a loved one. Some people say I’ve helped them deal with their grief. It’s quite touching.
“Mostly, I’m just glad I have the pictures. Every one of them brings back a nice, warm memory.”
A few of those memories include her son, whom we see in the photos grow from infancy to adulthood. Many of the later ones feature her mother alone, including her final years in a retirement home.
She took the last photo of the series in 2017, after her mother died. It shows an empty driveway.
This story was originally published December 22, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
