Ivan Sigal: Karachi Circular Railway

Ivan Sigal

Ivan Sigal’s work employs photography, video, and writing as vehicles to challenge narrative practices in media. He builds projects that bridge media systems theory with the creation of alternative media organizations.

Ivan is the executive director of Global Voices. He is a 2017-2018 Kluge Fellow in Digital Studies at the Library of Congress. He serves as the board chair for the Open Society Foundation’s Documentary Photography Project. He is a co-founder of Screen Projects. From 2013-2017 he was a fellow and affiliate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, furthering research in digital storytelling and networked publics. He was a 2017 nonfiction writing fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good. He was an adjunct professor at the Corcoran College of Art & Design, teaching visual storytelling, and a Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where he wrote about shifts in media technologies, and their effects on violent conflict. He was a regional director and vice president for Internews Network. Ivan has lived and traveled in over 80 countries, and was based in the former Soviet Union and Asia for over a decade. There he developed and led dozens of media initiatives focused on conflict, humanitarian disaster and transitional societies. 

Ivan’s creative work explores the boundaries of documentary, art and literary expression. His photography is in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery, the National Gallery of Art and others. He is the author of White Road, a book of photography and writing about Siberia and Central Asia (Steidl, 2012), which was also a solo exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. His most recent work, KCR, a multichannel interactive installation about a defunct commuter railway in Karachi, is currently traveling.