This is one of the most unusual exhibitions of the end of the year: Judith Black and Deanna Dikeman present Blended Families at Flow Photographic Gallery.
They have shared decades of their own personal archives with each other to create a conversation about family in 120 photographs.
In a first for documentary photography two photographers have opened their archives of intimate family photographs to each other to create an entirely new body of work.
For their new project, Blended Families, celebrated US photographers Deanna Dikeman (Leaving and Waving, 2021; Relative Moments, 2024) and Judith Black (Pleasant Street, 2020; Vacation, 2021; Where the Light Came In, 2025) revisited the source photography from their influential books.
Over nine months, the two artists engaged in an original photographic ‘call and response,’ sequentially selecting images from their extensive family archives to create a ‘chain’ that formed a sequence of subtle visual echoes.
The result is a narrative that connects and blends their families, establishing a conversation between the two photographers about their respective experiences of motherhood, family, love, and loss. The exhibition explores how photographic images arranged in this way can transcend our usual reliance on words, creating a new psycho-photographic language to present the lives of two families who, despite never meeting, are connected by a shared form of visual expression.
This common language enables Dikeman and Black to communicate their personal experiences, first with each other, and then with the audience
A catalogue contains all 120 photographs as well as a ‘conversation text’ between Dikeman and Black and a text by FPG’s curator, Alex Schneideman. The catalogue also contains family trees that reveal the links that connect the family members and friends – many who will be recognisable to those who has been following the work of these two important photographers.
Judith Black and Deanna Dikeman : Blended Families
Until February 28,2026
Flow Photographic Gallery
1010 Harrow Road
NW10 5NS, London, United Kingdom
020 7993 6596
www.flowphotographic.gallery
Catalogue
https://flowphotographic.gallery/print-sales/dikeman-black-blended-famili es/
