Deanna Dikeman has been an artist-photographer since 1985. She has photographed her midwestern family and surroundings since 1985, when she left a corporate job to try a photography class. She graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in Biology and a M.S. in Management. Deanna received the Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship in 1996, the United States Artists Booth Fellowship in 2008, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography in 2023. Deanna’s largest and longest photography project documented her parents and other family in her home town. That work included 27 years of photographs of her parents waving goodbye to her as she left from visiting them. Photographs from Leaving and Waving have been exhibited at festivals, museums, and galleries in 14 countries: Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA.