05 Nov Leaving and Waving
Deanna Dikeman
For 27 years, Deanna Dikeman took photographs as her parents waved her goodbye. After each visit, they stood in the driveway to send her off while she got into her car, rolling down her window and aiming her lens towards them and their home. The pictures show them raising their arms in farewell. You see them happy and sad. You see the seasons change and the years go by. Diekman’s father is visibly weakening. He leans on a walking stick and later on the car that is parked in the garage. And then, in one picture, and in all the ones that follow, her mother is seen alone. Standing in the driveway, she waves.
“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 good-bye ritual,”says Dikeman.
The last picture shows her parents’ house with the shutters down and no one in the driveway. It is a collective story, one that is told over and over again, yet unique to everyone. One day you are Dikeman in her car and then you are her parents in the driveway waving. It’s a story about family, aging, being together and parting, and the pain of saying goodbye.