Deanna Dikeman

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.