Leaving & Waving – Photography

It’s remarkable, the ordinary things that photographers winnow out of daily life to make art.

For 27 years, starting in 1991 when she was in her 30s, Deanna Dikeman visited her parents in Sioux City, Iowa. Each time she drove away, she photographed them waving goodbye from the front yard of their red suburban ranch house.

I never set out to make this series,” Dikeman says. “I just took these photographs as a way to deal with the sadness of leaving. It gradually turned into our good-bye ritual.”

Although Dikeman was working on a larger project, Relative Moments, that documents the dynamics of her extended family, she eventually realized this subset of colour and black-and-white images had the makings of a show. She assembled them into Leaving and Waving, on view at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver until April 23.

Above and Below:  Installation views at Polygon Gallery (photos by Dennis Ha)

“As the seasons shift, again and again, Dikeman’s parents become frailer and more stooped. Her father, glasses case clipped into the breast pocket of his shirt, begins to use a cane. Her son grows from a baby in the back seat to a young man.” – from a feature in Galleries West magazine.

All the Leaving and Waving photos are viewable on a section of Dikeman’s website, here.

Credit: Photo at the top of this post – Leaving and Waving 7 / 1991