27 years of goodbyes. 27 years of seasons that follow one another, of smiles, of dogs that grow old and children that become teenagers, of wives who lose their husbands, and of a camera – the author’s one – that eventually loses its subject.
For 27 years, Deanna Dikeman photographed her parents waving at her on the front door after each of her visits. With their smiles on their faces as they shake their hands, they seem to want to hold back something of those moments, in the knowledge that each greeting could be their last. ‘Leaving and Waving’ is a photographic book 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, gathering emotional power. Dikeman’s book ends with an image of his parents’ garage left empty, with no one there to perform the separation. “For the first time in my life, no one was waving back at me” The ritual continues elsewhere, everywhere.
€ 50,00
