Cleaning House: Return to the New by Luke Walter
About the Exhibit
Cleaning House: A Return to the New brings together Luke Walter’s practices as a photographer, printmaker, and writer, exploring what emerges when accumulated materials, deferred ideas, and foundational techniques converge. Over the past half decade, Walter built a home studio in his basement, assembling tools, constructing a black-and-white darkroom, and designing a custom exposure unit for cyanotype and screenprinting. Along the way, he collected surfaces, scraps, and objects such as wood, metal, and other materials that would eventually become both medium and collaborator.
During this same period, Walter carried a backlog of photographs from four trips dating back to 2022. Preparing for this exhibition became an act of reckoning: editing, revisiting, and ultimately working through years of deferred attention. Returning to earlier mediums and processes allowed him to apply everything he has learned and experienced to this point, transforming old materials and images into something renewed. By printing directly onto accumulated objects, he honored their histories while releasing them into new forms.
Text-based works run parallel to these prints, reflecting themes of memory, reflection, and narrative. Together, image and text trace a path of clearing, transformation, and creative renewal, demonstrating how revisiting foundational practices can become a way to engage more fully with the present.
Cleaning House: A Return to the New is both a literal and metaphorical clearing. It documents the transformation of materials, images, techniques, and ideas, inviting viewers to witness how the act of returning to tools, methods, and once-familiar moments can open space for the new.
About the Artist: Luke Walter
Luke Walter is a Washington, DC–based photographer, printmaker, filmmaker, and mixed media visual artist. Born in Northern New Jersey to a family supportive of the arts, his evolution as a storyteller has taken him across the United States and abroad, navigating commercial, editorial, and fine art environments.
While studying at the School of Visual Arts, Luke began his freelance career as a production assistant in New York City’s film and television industry. He later transitioned from motion pictures to still photography, where he continues to work professionally.
For Collectors
Art for purchase from Cleaning House: Return to the New by Luke Walter.
Luke Walter
El Marinero Guatemalteco
2025
34” x 13”
Hand-Pulled Serigraph on Stained Wood
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