Dana Mueller was born and raised in Thuringia, East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall. She received her MFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Mueller's photographs are visual records of encounters with people and environments that engage both familiar and foreign realms. Her narratives of everyday lives explore individual and collective identities using social context and landscapes to investigate these identities in relation to cultural and political realities. A second major theme is her return to her homeland of Thuringia and the emigrant experience of Heimat as otherness.
Mueller currently teaches at the College of Art and Design as well as Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Northeastern University College of Art, Media and Design. At Northeastern she taught Study Abroad programs in Venice and Havana, and in recent years has been directing their Photography and Design program in Berlin, Germany.