Founding Directors, ITI Workshop, MFA and Press (2014-2022)

Nicholas Muellner
Nicholas Muellner is an artist who operates at the intersection of photography and writing. Through books, exhibitions and slide lectures, his projects investigate the limits of photography as a documentary pursuit and as an interface to socio-political and personal narratives. Often focused on a queer experience of the post-Soviet world, his work transforms descriptive accounts into literary dramas, autobiographical reflections, and philosophical inquiries.

His five published books include Lacuna Park: Essays and Other Adventures in Photography, The Amnesia Pavilions and In Most Tides an Island, which was shortlisted for the Aperture/Paris Photo Photobook of the Year, and selected as one of the seven outstanding books of the year in Artforum. In addition to solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe, his writings have been published by MACK, Aperture, Radius, Afterimage, Triple Canopy, Art Journal Routledge and others. Muellner has performed slide lectures internationally, including MoMA P.S.1, the Carnegie Museum of Art, The Photographers Gallery, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. His work has been supported by the 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography, the John Gutmann Fellowship and residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo Colonies, among others. Muellner received a BA in comparative literature from Yale University and an MFA in Photography from Temple University. Muellner is founding co-director of the Image Text MFA and Press.

Catherine Taylor is the author of Image Text Music, a collection of essays in visual culture; You, Me, and the Violence, on puppets, drones, and power; and of Apart, a mixed-genre memoir and political history that combines prose, poetry, cultural theory, and found texts from South African archives. Her first book, Giving Birth: A Journey Into the World of Mothers and Midwives (Penguin Putnam), won the Lamaze International Birth Advocate Award. Her essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in the Seneca Review, The Colorado Review, Witness, The Believer, and elsewhere. Taylor was a co-founder and producer of The Human Rights Watch Film Festival and she has received residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Djerassi, and the Millay Colony. She is a founding editor of Essay Press, an independent press dedicated to publishing innovative essays in book form and of Image Text Ithaca MFA and Press, supporting work at the intersection of writing and photography. Taylor received her Ph.D. from Duke University. Taylor is founding co-director of the Image Text MFA and Press.