About

Deanna Dikeman was born 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. Since 1988, Deanna has had seventeen solo shows and has been included in over 150 group and two-person 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, 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. Her book Leaving and Waving was published by Chose Commune in March 2021, after being short-listed for the MACK 2020 First Book Award. The book 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. Photos from “Leaving and Waving” were shown at the Cortona on the Move festival in Cortona, Italy, and at Festival du Regard in Cergy, France, in 2021, and at Cortona on the Move AlUla in Saudi Arabia in 2022.

Fellowships and Grants

• Nikon Photo Contest, Third Place, The Open Award: Photo Story, 2017​​​​​​​
• Art Omi International Artists Residency, 2011
• Forward Thinking Museum, JGS Photography Contest Runner-up, 3rd Quarter 2011