Close up portrait of female Marine in desert by Rita Leistner

Award-winning photographer, writer, and educator, Rita Leistner's varied career has taken her from academia to war and back again, intersecting the genres of art, photojournalism, and literary criticism. She is a graduate of the International Center of Photography in New York and has a Master of Arts in comparative literature from the University of Toronto, where she has also previously taught the history of photojournalism and documentary photography. Her first sole-authored book, Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan, was shortlisted for the 2015 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology. She is co-author of several other books including Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq and The Edward Curtis Project: A Modern Picture Story. Her photography has been exhibited and published internationally, and her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and books including Julian Stallabrass's Memories of Fire: Images of War and the Wars of Images and Michael Kamber's Photojournalists on War: The Untold Stories from Iraq. In 2015, she completed work on a ten-year trilogy project in the Levant, which includes the award-winning film Miklat. Leistner was also a finalist for the 2017 Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography at Harvard.

Artist CV (PDF)
Artist Bio (PDF)

Rita Leistner: Everybody Cries In The Cut Block - drool., October 2017

Rita Leistner Award-Winning Photojournalist - Battle Zine, January 2016

First New Book of 2014 is a Doosie! - ICP Library, January 2014

Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan (Part I) - Literary Review of Canada, February 2012

Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan (Part II) - Literary Review of Canada, March 2012

Confessions of a digital naive - MC Reviews

Marshall McLuhan, Green Lantern and the War In Afghanistan - University of Toronto

Rita Leistner - Widewalls