Women's History Month: Deanna Dikeman
‘Stairs’ , 1996, from series “Home alone (in the middle of the day)”, ©Deanna Dikeman
Images and text by Deanna Dikeman
Deanna Dikeman has been an artist since 1985. She resides in Kansas City and Columbia, Missouri. Her first body of work was a study of the suburban landscape in Johnson County, Kansas. She photographed her parents and other family in Iowa and Nebraska. She has done a series of photographs of interior details of homes. Her Wardrobe project includes photographs of old clothes in a thrift store and in the Stephens College Historical Costume Collection. She has photographed ballroom dancers and their clothing in movement. Her Lost Dog series shows posters of lost and found pets. Her most recent series, Lot Line, examines the spaces between houses.
‘Telephone’, 1996, from series “Home alone (in the middle of the day)”, ©Deanna Dikeman
‘Purse’, 1996, from series “Home alone (in the middle of the day)”, ©Deanna Dikeman
My photographs in the “Home alone (in the middle of the day)” series were influenced by Judith Turner. I saw her book Annotations on Ambiguity: Photographs of Architecture, published in 1986 by Axis Publications, Tokyo, Japan. I don’t recall ever seeing an actual photograph of Turner’s, but photo books can gave us access to work and ideas that we might never see in a gallery. As I turned the pages of the book, I remember being intrigued by her close-ups of buildings, both interiors and exteriors. As a novice photographer, these were shots I had not considered making. The black and white details were striking in their austerity. There were cropped shots of columns where I could feel the warmth of the sunlight illuminating the curved shape. There were nearly abstract elements of walls at room corners, condensing three dimensions into two with variations in grey tonality, like a charcoal drawing. Seeing Turner’s work surely made an impression that I carried forward into my image making.
Untitled, 2006. Alvar Aalto, Church of the Three Crosses, Imatra, Finland. Image Courtesy of
©Judith Turner and Edition Axel Menges GmbH
Untitled,1989. Maki and Associates (Fumihiko Maki, principal), Tepia Science Pavilion, Tokyo, Japan. Image Courtesy of ©Judith Turner
and Edition Axel Menges GmbH
‘Green Sheer Drapes’, 2000, from series “Home alone (in the middle of the day)”, ©Deanna Dikeman
