Eren Orbey's "A Photographer's Parents Wave Farewell"

Deanna Dikeman, "Leaving and Waving 7" (1991)

Eren Orbey’s “A Photographer’s Parents Wave Farewell” (newyorker.com, March 4, 2020) is one of my favorite newyorker.com posts of the year (so far). It’s a review of Deanna Dikeman’s portrait series “Leaving and Waving,” currently on view at deannadikeman.com. An artfully condensed version of Orbey’s piece appears in this week’s New Yorker (“Goings on About Town: Art: Deanna Dikeman”). It’s worth quoting in full:

In 1990, when this photographer’s parents were in their early seventies, they sold her childhood home, in Sioux City, Iowa, and moved to a bright-red ranch house in the same town. At the end of their daughter’s visits, they would stand outside as she drove away, arms rising together in a farewell wave. For years, Dikeman captured those departing moments; the resulting portrait series, “Leaving and Waving,” compresses nearly three decades of adieux into a deft and affecting chronology. The pair recede into the warm glow of the garage on rainy evenings and laugh under the eaves in better weather. In summer, they blow kisses from the driveway. In winter, they wear scarves and stand behind snowbanks. Inevitably, they age. A few pictures, cropped to include the car’s interior, convey the parallel progress of Dikeman’s own life. Early images show the blurred face of a baby, who, in later shots, as a young man, takes the wheel while Dikeman photographs her elderly parents from the passenger seat.

That “The pair recede into the warm glow of the garage on rainy evenings and laugh under the eaves in better weather” is wonderful. The entire note is wonderful – a poignant reminder of “time’s relentless melt” (Susan Sontag).