Deanna Dikeman was born in 1954 in Sioux City, Iowa, USA, and currently resides in Kansas City. She has photographed her midwestern family and surroundings 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 received an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship in 1996, and the United States Artists Booth Fellowship in 2008. She is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. Since 1988, Deanna has had 24 solo shows and has been included in over 160 group shows. Her photographs have been public art projects in Kansas City, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; and Albany, New York. “A Photographer’s Parents Wave Farewell” was one of the top 25 stories of 2020 in The New Yorker. Her work has also been published in Buzzfeed News JPG, Country Living, D la Repubblica, DUMMY, GEO, GUP, Harpers Magazine, M Le magazine du Monde, TAZ Berlin, Der Tagesspiegel Sonntag, The New York Times T Magazine, Réponses Photo, Slate Behold, theo, De Volkskrant Observatorium, and VOSTOK, among others. She has two photobooks published by Chose Commune: Leaving and Waving in 2021 and Relative Moments in 2024. Leaving and Waving received the 2021 Prix Nadar awarded by the Association Gens d’Images in France. The book also was a finalist for the 2021 Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award. Photographs from Leaving and Waving have been exhibited at festivals, museums, and galleries in thirteen countries: Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, and the United States.

Awards

2021 - Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards: First PhotoBook Shortlist,
2020 - MACK First Book Award Shortlist,
2017​​​​​​​ - Nikon Photo Contest, Third Place, The Open Award: Photo Story,
2011 - Art Omi International Artists Residency,
2011 - Forward Thinking Museum, JGS Photography Contest Runner-up, 3rd Quarter

Collections

Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedelia, Missouri
FENIX Museum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas
The Photographic Collection/ SK Stiftung Kultur foundation, Köln, Germany
The State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri
University of Missouri Museum of Art and Archeology, Columbia, Missouri

Books from Deanna DIKEMAN