27 years of goodbyes. 27 years of season that follow one another, of smiles, of dogs growing old and children becoming teenagers, of wives losing their husbands, of the author’s camera losing its subject.
For 27 years, Deanna Dikeman photographed her parents greeting her on the doorstep after each of her visits. With smiles plastered on their faces as they shake their hands, they seem to want to hold something of those moments, in the knowledge that each greeting could be their last.
‘Leaving and Waving’ is a photobook about dying, offering a contemplative experience of the withering of life in the course of a photographic sequence that bears witness to skin dropping, the body weakening and shrinking in the progression of pages, absence occupying the reader’s imagination.
The narrative is minimal but profound: the repetition throughout the book of the same simple gesture forges a ritual meaning, accumulating emotional power. Dikeman’s book ends with an image of his parents’ garage left empty, with no one there to perform the parting. “For the first time in my life, no one was waving at me from the driveway.” The ritual continues elsewhere, everywhere.
€ 50,00
