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Rita Leistner (born 1964, Scarborough, Ontario) is a Canadian documentary photographer who has covered conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cambodia, Israel, and Palestine. She has published three books: Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan; The Edward Curtis Project: A Modern Picture Story with Marie Clements; and Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq with Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Kael Alford, and Thorne Anderson. Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan was nominated as for several awards, including the 2015 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology. In October 2017, Leistner premiered The Tree Planters, an exhibition focused on Canadian tree planters, at the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, where she is also represented. From 2010-2016, Leistner taught a course titled “The Art and Purpose of Photojournalism and Documentary Photography" at Victoria College within the University of Toronto.

Early life and education
Leistner was born in Scarborough, Ontario. She graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in French, English, and History in 1988 and an M.A. in Comparative Literature in 1990. After graduating, Leistner spent seven years working as a lighting technician in the film industry. In 1999, she studied photojournalism at the International Center for Photography in New York City.

To earn money to attend school, Leistner planted more than a half million trees in Canada between 1984-1993.

Selected Publications
2014 Leistner, Rita. Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan. Foreword by Julian Stallabrass. London: Intellect Books / The University of Chicago Press, February 2014.

2013 Leistner, Rita. "Embedded with Murders." Memories of Fire: Images of War and the War of Images. Ed. Julian Stallabrass. London: Photoworks, 2013. 82-99.

2013 Leistner, Rita. "Rita Leistner." Ed. Michael Kamber. The Untold Stories from Iraq: Photojournalists on War. Austin: University of Texas Press, Spring 2013. 156-162

2010 Leistner, Rita and Marie Clements. The Edward Curtis Project: A Modern Picture Story. Vancouver: Talon Books, 2010.

2006 Leistner, Rita. "Detained." Suspect. Ed. John Knechtel. Cambridge: MIT Press and Alphabet City Media, 2006. 96-107.

2005 Leistner, Rita and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Kael Alford and Thorne Anderson. Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq. Foreword by Philip Jones Griffiths. Vermont: Chelsea Green, 2005.

Films
2013 Miklat. Dir. Rita Leistner. Short Documentary.