Relative Moments

Relative Moments
Deanna Dikeman

December 5-January 23, 2026
Opening Reception: December 5, 6-9pm
Free and open to the public

Aurora PhotoCenter, Main Gallery
1125 Brookside Avenue, Suite C9, Indianapolis

In the exhibition Relative Moments, Deanna Dikeman’s photographs show the small, quiet moments of life that build a family and bind it together. The artist has documented her Midwestern family for over 45 years. When home to visit, Dikeman photographed her family doing the everyday activities, including washing dishes, hanging laundry, mowing the lawn, and cleaning gutters, that physically maintain a home inside and out. Her photographs also capture the lived moments — sharing cake and ice cream, Dikeman’s father doing a crossword puzzle with his grandson — that connect one family member to another and older generations to younger.

Throughout most of Relative Moments, which was published by Chose Commune as a book in 2024, Dikeman acts as an invisible documentarian; in the over 200 images published in the book, her family rarely look directly at Dikeman behind the lens of the camera. Rather their gaze remains in the moment being photographed, creating a document of family life that feels authentic, spontaneous, and true.

Over the decades she shot the images for Relative Moments, Dikeman always made sure to photograph her parents waving goodbye from the driveway of their home at the end of each visit. This series-within-a-series, entitled Leaving and Waving, uses the framework of serial photography, in which repeated elements, such as the house, parents, and the gesture of waving, provide a context to closely observe changes in Dikeman’s parents and family over time. With images in Leaving and Waving spanning 1991-2017, we see changes both big and small, as broad smiles and waves become quieter, Dikeman’s baby appears in the frame, and eventually, two parents waving becomes one. These shifts from photograph to photograph form a deeply emotional narrative that speaks to the universal human condition of living and loving through life’s inevitable ebbs and flows.

Dikeman has written of Leaving and Waving, which was published as a book by Chose Commune in 2021 to international acclaim, “I never set out to make this series. I just took these photographs as a way to deal with the sadness of leaving. …When I discovered the series of accumulated Leaving and Waving photographs, I found a story about family, aging, and the sorrow of saying goodbye.”

The Aurora PhotoCenter exhibition Relative Moments brings together the series Leaving and Waving with images from the larger body of work for the first time in a unique installation, printed entirely at Aurora, that runs the entire perimeter of the gallery. Both of Dikeman’s books, including the sold-out and rare Leaving and Waving, will be available for viewing in the gallery. Relative Moments will be on view at Aurora PhotoCenter through January 23, 2026, with an opening December 5, 2025, from 6-9pm; the artist will be present in the gallery for the opening to talk about the work and sign books.

Deanna Dikeman was born in 1954 in Sioux City, Iowa, and currently resides in Kansas City. She has photographed her midwestern family and surroundings 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 received an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship in 1996, and the United States Artists Booth Fellowship in 2008. She is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. “A Photographer’s Parents Wave Farewell” was one of the top 25 stories of 2020 in The New Yorker. She has two photobooks published by Chose Commune: Leaving and Waving in 2021 and Relative Moments in 2024. Leaving and Waving received the 2021 Prix Nadar awarded by the Association Gens d’Images in France. The book also was a finalist for the 2021 Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award. 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 United States.

Annual operating support for Aurora PhotoCenter provided by the City of Indianapolis through the Indy Arts Council. Additional annual support provided by the Efroymson Family Fund, Joy of Giving Something Foundation, Inc., Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, Indiana Arts Commission, Aurora Members, and donors who believe in Aurora’s mission.