Leaving and Waving brings together Deanna Dikeman’s photographs of her parents saying goodbye outside their home. The sequence spans 27 years, beginning with an unplanned picture made in 1991. On subsequent visits, she continued photographing the departure, turning an ordinary moment at the end of a family visit into a sustained photographic practice. The people remain familiar, while changing seasons and the accumulation of years give each farewell a different place in the sequence.
The project began within Dikeman’s larger body of work, Relative Moments. Here, the repeated gesture becomes the centre of a book about family relationships, passing time and the sadness of leaving. Its structure separates black-and-white photographs from colour images. Looking across the sequence allows the reader to follow the recurrence of a small domestic ritual rather than a single decisive event. The photographs connect the act of returning home with the departure that follows each visit.
Dikeman was born in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1954 and lives in Kansas City. She has photographed her family and surroundings in the American Midwest since 1985, when a photography class followed her departure from a corporate job. That continuing attention to the people close to her provides the context for this particular series.
This record describes Chose Commune’s second edition, dated July 2026. The English and French publication has 112 pages, measures 19 × 23.5 cm, and uses a section-sewn softcover binding. Cécile Poimbœuf-Koizumi is credited with concept and editorial direction, and bureau Kayser with design.
