Deanna Dikeman
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American, born 1954
Projects/Portfolios
Relative Moments
Introduction
The subjects of my images are my relatives. I document them in their home environments in Iowa and Nebraska.
I began by photographing my parents’ home in Iowa. It was a personal documentary effort, starting when my parents sold the house we lived in when I was a child. They moved, and subsequently I realized that their new house was now home. So I took pictures of that. My scope expanded as I started taking pictures of my aunts and uncles and their houses and yards. After my son was born, he appeared in the images too.
Although the project started out as nostalgia and documentation, I discovered that the pictures can provide a glimpse into an intimate detail of an everyday world that otherwise might go unnoticed. I am interested in the significance of the commonplace routine of their lives.
Ballroom
Introduction
These photographs of professional and amateur dancers were taken at ballroom dancesport competitions in the United States. I am an amateur competitive ballroom dancer. I love the ladies’ dresses, rich with rhinestones and vibrant colors. After my photographs of thrift store and vintage clothing, I became interested in photographing the dancers’ costumes. But it wasn’t enough to show the costumes hanging on a rack, my mode for the old clothing. I discovered that these clothes only came to life when they were on moving bodies. By showing the clothing in motion, I can capture the energy of the dancers and the music that moves them, as well as the visual feast of color and sparkle.
I am also interested in the presence of the dancers’ bodies, including their gestures and how they touch themselves and their dance partners. Although dance is an art form that must be viewed in real time, while listening to the accompanying music, I want to isolate parts of the dancers’ bodies and show the expressiveness and sensuality of one single dance moment.
Wardrobe
Lot Line
Introduction
When I am driving down my street to get to my house, I pass my neighbor’s side yard and then the side of my yard, just before I turn into my driveway. One summer day, while turning into my driveway, I noticed that the neighbor’s lawn had been mowed. Now the grass on our side was longer. There was a clean line going down the middle of what had been a clear expanse of shaggy green grass. A week later, the reverse had happened: our yard had been mowed and the cut expanse was flipped to the other side. The lawn-mowing was delineating the property line. This invisible, legal line of land ownership was suddenly visible. I began taking notice of other visible markers of these quite real, but invisible, lot lines.
In my project, Lot Line, I am looking at the spaces between houses. I am finding the visible markers such as fences, utility poles, and lawn-mowing lines that show the invisible property ownership lines.
Lost Dog
Introduction
I always read the lost pet posters that I see on utility poles and stop signs. I imagine how upset I would be if I lost my dog. I think of the sad task of making a poster and taping it to stop signs and poles and grocery store bulletin boards. When I have a camera with me, I take a photograph of the poster. I take inspiration from the work of Walker Evans, and how he photographed signs all over America. I call this series “Lost Dog” even though I include all other lost and found animal posters.
Haw Contemporary, Kansas City, MO, United States
27 Good-byes, Deanna Dikeman, Blurb, USA, 2009
Artist Statement
I am drawn to making pictures that capture glimpses into my everyday world that otherwise might go unnoticed. Relative Moments, a series I began in 1986 and continue to work on, chronicles ordinary moments of my extended family’s activities. With Wardrobe, I photographed vintage and thrift store clothes, wondering about their stories and giving them new life in my art. Ballroom captures blurred or frozen motion of costumes and bodies in competitive ballroom dancing.
Deanna Dikeman was born in Sioux City, Iowa, USA, in 1954. She has been an artist-photographer since 1985, when she left a corporate job to try a photography class. She has M.S. and B.S. degrees from Purdue University.
She photographs her family in Iowa and Nebraska in a body of work called Relative Moments. She has done a series of photographs of interior details of homes, Home Alone in the Middle of the Day. Her Wardrobe project includes photographs of old clothes in a thrift store and the Stephens College Historical Costume Collection. Other projects are Suburban Photographs, Lost Dog (posters of lost pets), Ballroom (ballroom dancers and their clothing in movement), and Lot Line (looking at the spaces between houses).
Her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois; The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri; The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona; The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas; and the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedelia, Missouri.
In 2008, she was awarded the $50,000 United States Artists Booth Fellowship. She received the Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship in 1996. Other honors include a 2006 Charlotte Street Foundation Fellowship in Kansas City, and the Art Omi International Artists Residency in Ghent, NY. She is represented by Haw Contemporary in Kansas City, Missouri.
Since 1988, Deanna has been included in over 112 group and two-person shows, and fourteen solo shows. Her photographs have been on billboards and outdoor displays as public art projects in Kansas City, Missouri; St. Louis Missouri; and Albany, New York. Her work has been featured in online shows and blogs such as Slate Magazine’s Behold, and Lenscratch. Her self-published book, 27 Good-byes, received Honorable Mention in 2010 Photography Book Now. Deanna was shortlisted for the 2020 MACK First Book Award. Her "Leaving and Waving" series was featured in the online New Yorker on March 4, 2020.
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