In her 2007 book
Photography and Australia,
Helen Ennis writes that Picone is among a group of photographers and photojournalists who emerged during the postmodernism of the post-1980s era, when documentary photography "unexpectedly resurfaced". Ennis explains that documentary photography and photojournalism had become divided during the 1970s due to
ideology, but this gap was lessened in the 1990s due to factors such as the introduction of glossy weekend magazines, which presented photographic essays on contemporary life. Ennis includes Picone as one of the "social documentary" photographers alongside Stephen Dupont and David Dare Parker. 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==