Leaving and Waving
© Deanna DikemanFor 27 years, Deanna Dikeman took photographs as she waved goodbye and drove away from visiting her parents at their home in Sioux City, Iowa. She started in 1991 with a quick snapshot and continued taking photographs with each departure. "I never set out to make this series. I just took these 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. These photographs are part of a larger body of work I call Relative Moments, which has chronicled the lives of my parents and other relatives since 1986. When I discovered the series of accumulated “leaving and waving” photographs, I found a story about family, ageing, and the sorrow of saying goodbye"
In 2009, there is a photograph where Dikeman's father is no longer there. He passed away a few days after his 91st birthday. "My mother continued to wave goodbye to me. Her face became more forlorn with my departure. In 2017, my mother had to move to assisted living. For a few months, I photographed the goodbyes from her apartment door. In October of 2017 she passed away. When I left after her funeral, I took one more photograph, of the empty driveway. For the first time in my life, no one was waving back at me."
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
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