Jack Picone

Jack V. Picone (born 1958) is an Australian documentary photographer, photojournalist, author, festival/collective founder, tutor and academic. He specialises in social-documentary photography.

Picone's coverage of war zones and social issues is internationally prominent, and over a career spanning more than three decades, his photojournalism has encompassed 10 conflicts across three continents, the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and the Nuba peoples of Sudan, Africa, among many other subjects.

His work has been featured in a wide range of international publications including Time, Newsweek, The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), The Age, Liberation, Der Spiegel, L'Express, Granta, and his exhibited work has been displayed at numerous international venues, including the Australian Centre of Photography, University of Berkeley, United Nations headquarters and Visa Pour L'Image Perpignan. Picone has also authored/coauthored seven books. Picone grew up in rural Australia, and is of an Italian Australian and English Australian background, a period that was later self-described as a "privileged middle-class background". Picone's grandfather served with the Australian military in Papua New Guinea during World War II, and this would later influence the direction of his photographic career.

During his early childhood, Picone was intermittently cared for by an Australian-Aboriginal nanny who he knew as "Ilene"; in 2016, Picone recounted the times when Ilene would be driven back to the local mission where she lived: "I vividly recall at the end of each working week my father putting Ilene and me in his big 1966 Chevrolet car and driving us out of town … We drove 'down the track' to drop Ilene back to the 'mission' (Aboriginal settlement) to be reunited with her family and friends."

Picone's first professional role was that of a staff photographer at the prominent Australian daily newspaper, SMH, as well as its weekend glossy magazine, Good Weekend, which is a position he began in 1987. Around the same time, Simon O'Dwyer and Trent Parke were gaining experience, also as staff photographers, at The Age and The Australian, respectively.

The "final catalyst", in Picone's words, was the Laurie Lee book As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, a fictional account of a young man who leaves his home in Cotswolds, England, UK, in 1943 and eventually finds himself in the Spanish Civil War. Picone explained in 2013 that Lee "really captured the atmosphere of the Spain he saw, coloured by his young man idealism."

The First Liberian Civil War was the subject of Picone's correspondence in 1996, but it was not until 2001 that he returned to another conflict zone. After returning to Australia in 1998, where he founded the Sydney branch of the now-defunct Network Photographers agency, Picone was accompanied by a fellow Australian photographer to the Thai/Myanmar-border town of Mae Sai, where fighting had broken out between the Shan State Army and the Burmese Army.

Picone's war photography was then featured in the 2002 "Beyond the Facade: Twentyone Years of Photojournalism From Network Photographers" exhibition that commemorated the 21st anniversary of the Network agency, which had been founded in London by young photographers looking to publish "politically concerned pictures". Over the course of the agency's lifespan, Picone contributed to the forming of its reputation as a source of "hard-hitting" photojournalism.

Picone was based in Bangkok at the time of the 2010 Thai political protests that were organised by the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship ("Red Shirts"), and his detailed account of two army snipers, who he was physically alongside while they were engaged in conflict, was published in SMH. His coverage produced the photographic essay "Battle for Bangkok", for which Picone became a finalist at the 2010 Walkley Awards.

HIV/AIDS After the launch of the Positive Lives project in 1993, a HIV/AIDS photographic collaboration between the Terrence Higgins Trust and Concern Worldwide, Picone volunteered as a contributor over a nine-year period. The volunteer-led project sought to use photography to address the stigma and prejudices surrounding the virus, and reached over two million people during a 15-year period.

Although Picone's documentation was varied, comprising a Thai monastery hospice, a Thai children's home for orphans living with the virus, the Hong Kong/China border where sex workers and truck drivers had become unwitting viral transmitters, and Australian HIV-positive activists, it was his work with Andrew Knox that became the most prominent. Knox had contracted the virus at the age of 14 years through a blood transfusion and subsequently invited Picone to document his life story until he died in 1999. Knox was diagnosed with Aids Dementia Complex (ADC), which made it impossible for him to live at home. In addition to memory loss, seizures and violent mood swings, he was hospitalised frequently with pneumonia.

In accordance with Knox's invitation, Picone remained with Knox until his last living moment, when he was surrounded by his family. additionally, Picone published an article entitled "Andrew's Story" in the Al Jazeera Magazine publication in 2015. while deceased British photojournalist and Magnum Photos founder George Rodger preceded her in 1949. Picone explained in 2006 that he had "researched the area fairly thoroughly but it was still a 'locked' expanse of geography and had been for approximately fifteen years."

Picone eventually sought to not only address the "dearth of accurate information from inside the mountains" that he encountered, but he also wanted to create "visual footsteps" in a "storytelling sense":

… the idea that this noble group of people living in a very remote region, that had been a closed door to the rest of the world, fuelled my imagination. It gave me a powerful desire to go there; document their lives and tell their story. I so much wanted to see how their world had changed in the time that eclipsed since Riefenstahl and Rodger had been there. A feature article entitled "Vanishing People" was later published in SMH on 1 November 1997, In 2006, Picone stated that the Nuba people remain an "enigma" and that the "story is still unfinished" for him.

In October 2015, Picone published a photographic essay on the Nai Soi village, where Kayan tribespeople have become self-sufficient through the tourism income they earn since fleeing Myanmar. Visitors who want to see the "long-necks" or "giraffe women" who wear the customary brass neck rings of the hill tribe are charged an entry fee to walk through the village.

Also for Al Jazeera, Picone visited the Ban Khun Samut Chin fishing village in Thailand in 2015 with respect to the impact of climate change. According to the village chief, the whole community is anxious because the village has faced "rising seas and coastal erosion for over 30 years".

Reportage Festival and Documentary Photography Workshops The inaugural Reportage Festival of photojournalism, cofounded by Picone, Dupont, Dare Parker and Michael Amendolia, another documentary photographer, was held in Sydney after the concept was first conceived of in Bondi, Sydney, in 1999. The founders hired the now-defunct Valhalla Cinema venue in the inner-city suburb of Glebe, wherein two Kodak carousels that alternated between large-scale projections of vertical and horizontal photojournalism images were set up.

For the 2013 instalment of the event that was held annually for a period after its inception, U.S. photographer James Nachtwey showed his Testimony collection at an outdoor exhibition at Circular Quay, which includes images from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Further, one of the workshops was hosted by Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb from Magnum Photos. Picone and Dupont appeared on the Australian breakfast TV programme Sunrise on 7 to further discuss the issue publicly.

Picone founded the Reportage photography workshops that allow participants to undertake international assignments on location with experienced photojournalists who are familiar with the corresponding places in 2005 initially as "Communiqué"—the "Reportage" renaming occurred later. Partnering with Dupont, the first postrenaming workshop was held in Cambodia in 2010, and this was sequentially followed by Nepal, Indonesia and Myanmar. Video footage of the Nepalese workshop, shot in Kathmandu, was published on the Vimeo platform by the Reportage multimedia tutor Ed Giles.

Other work Wind Riders During the period wherein Picone covered war zones in Africa, he accumulated images of fishing workers off the east coast of Africa (south Somalia and Kenya) for "therapy and restoration". The images eventually formed the Wind Riders collection.

The Shearers Around the turn of the 21st century, Picone shot The Shearers collection in the rural NSW area of Australia that he had grown up in, documenting an occupation that had "epitomised the machismo and romanticism of the outback." Picone recalls childhood memories of "strong, sunburnt, irreverent men who worked hard and played hard." In 2016, he contributed the Shearers image "Road Stop #1" to the Project 365 + 1 online art project for which poetry and photography are combined.

Lake Providence During the late 1990s, Picone read that the small U.S. town of Lake Providence, Louisiana, had been identified as the country's socio-economically poorest area, and this led him to travel to the town to capture images for his Small Town America series.

Portraiture As part of his portrait work, Picone spent time with gay activist, writer and artist Quentin Crisp in 1990, at his apartment in New York City, New York, U.S. Crisp died nine years later, slightly prior to his 91st birthday.

Documentary photography and photojournalism In terms of his overall perspective regarding documentary photography and photojournalism, Picone made the following statement in 2011:

Documentary photography enables me to approach people from cultures vastly different to my own and communicate with them. As I document people and tell their stories, communication is exchanged between myself and them. Finally when those photographs are published in another place, it becomes a catalyst for further communication between different cultures. I like the idea that my reportages can be a conduit of communication between different cultures in different places. It is like the beginning of an intriguing conversation … Photography enables me to tell their story on a micro level but it also points to a story about the world we all live in, on a macro level.

He further explained "documentary practice" in 2013 in terms of storytelling; that is, it is driven "by human need to know, to tell, to share and connect with others on both rational and non-rational levels."

Regarding war correspondence specifically, Picone's attitude was expressed as part of a feature piece in Volume 36 of Australia's Digital Photography magazine in 2014, wherein he said to the interviewer that one's role is not voyeuristic, but it is instead to "give someone a voice who doesn't have one." He also acknowledged, however, that the "grey area" of conflict zones means that he has approached each case according to its own circumstances, and he concluded with the warning that those who seek to "save the world and help everyone" on every assignment will not achieve their original goal.

When asked about his advice for aspiring "conflict zone photojournalists" in March 2016, Picone revealed that he wants to tell such people that they should not proceed, but what he typically says in actuality is that they should not go to any conflict zone unless they "have the greatest well founded conviction for going there in the first place" because it "is not the movies and it is not a computer game … You can die." In March 2016, Picone identified his preferred camera models and explained why Fujfilm's products are his favoured photography gear:

Their film cameras … GS645 medium format and the Fujilfilm TX 1 Panorama. Their latest digital release the X-Pro-2 is "off the graph" in terms of sensor quality, has a small discreet retro style that is easy to run with in a war zone and it doesn't scream out "kill me" for my ostentatious—worth way too much money—DSLR camera. 24 Studen Im Leben der katholischen Kirche, Random House GmbH, Munich, 2005. Proud To Be Nuba: Faces and Voices, Stories of a Long Struggle, Code X Publishing, 2007. Reveries: Photography and Mortality, Australian National Portrait Gallery, 2007 – book accompaniment for the photographic exhibition. This Day of Change: 132 Photographers Capture Hope, Courrier Japon, Kodansha, 2009. War: A Degree South Collection, T&G Publishing, Hardcover, 2009. Blood and Love, self-published book of 20 years of documentary photography, 2010. 10X100: FINEPIX X100 by 10 Australian Photographers, T&G Publishing, Hardcover, 2011. Shaman of Bali by John Greet, Monsoon, Paperback/eBook, 2016 – cover photograph by Picone.

Selected exhibitions 2021: IMAGINE: REFLECTIONS ON PEACE MUSEUM OF THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS GENEVA. 2021: IMAGINE: REFLECTIONS ON PEACE BRUSSELS. 2020: INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF RED CROSS ZURICH "Peace." 2018: APERATURE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE "Photography Ethics." 2017: MUSEE DE L'HOMME PARIS "Human Rights." 2017: MUSEUM AAN DE STROOM HOLLAND "BODY ART" 2017: MONASH GALLERY OF ART "PEACE": A Degree South Collective Exhibition. 2011: BALLARAT INTERNATIONAL FOTO BIENNALE "The Nuba of Sudan." 2010: AUSTRALIAN CENTRE OF PHOTOGRAPHY "War: South." 2007: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA, Reveries: Photography And Mortality. 2007: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA "Reveries: Photography And Mortality." 2007: UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY "State of Place: Refugee Life on the Thai-Burma Border." 2006: SHEFFIELD INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL "Vanessa, portrait of a transsexual dedicated to promoting awareness of HIV." 2006: FOTOFREO FESTIVAL Audio-visual projection of recent work. 2005: POSITIVE LIVES Positive Responses to HIV. An exhibition in situ on the platform of Madrid's Central Railway Station. 2004: VISA POUR L'IMAGE, PERPIGNAN, FRANCE Exhibition of 50 prints from personal book project "1200 Miles: Life and Death on the Thai-Burma Border." 2004: ACTIONAID XV International AIDS Conference held in Bangkok. An exhibition to expose the extreme stigma attached to HIV/AIDS. 2004: UNITED NATIONS, New York, "Positive Lives." 2003: FIFTY CROWS "Social Change Photography" at the Fifty Crows Gallery in San Francisco. 2002: NETWORK 21 EXHIBITION "21 years of Photojournalism." 2002: AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY "Witness: An Exhibition of Australian Photography." 2002: CONDE NAST TRAVELLER "Truth in Travel" A group exhibition in aid of the Tusk Trust, which supports the conservation of African wildlife. 2001: SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL GALLERY "Positive Lives." 2000: THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM "Body Art," an exhibition about body adornment among indigenous peoples around the world. 1999: LEICA/CCP Documentary Photography Exhibition and Award at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne. 1999: REPORTAGE "A celebration of Australian Photojournalism." 1995: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL "YES" an exhibition of photographs dedicated to the resilience of the human spirit at the Myer Gallery, Melbourne. 1995: VISA POUR L'IMAGE PERPIGNAN, FRANCE "Genocide Rwanda" Audiovisual projection.

Selected awards

1998/1999: Australian Best Commissioned Magazine Photography – Category: Portraiture. 1999: Leica/ CCP Documentary Photography Exhibition and Award – Finalist. IFDP (International Fund for Documentary Photography) award for photographic essay Living with Aids on Thailand. Pictures of the Year International (U.S.) 56th POYi – "Riders of the Sea", Dhow boats in Zanzibar. Pictures of the Year International (U.S.) – "War Children of Bosnia". Pictures of the Year International (U.S.) 59th POYi – "Surviving Aids". 1999: World Press Photo Awards (Holland) – Honorable Mention, News category. 1998: World Press Photo Awards (Holland) – 1st Place, Daily Life category. 2006: UNESCO HPA (Humanity Photo Awards) – 1st Place, Documentary Award, Daily Life category, "The Mountain People Time Forgot – The Nuba of Sudan". 2009: PX3 | Prix de la Photographie Paris – 1st Place Category: Water. 2009: Amnesty International Media Award Finalist for "Excellence in Human Rights Reporting" (multimedia category) on post-election violence in Kenya. 2010: Walkley Awards, Australia, Finalist for Photographic Essay Battle for Bangkok on 2010 political insurrection in Thailand.