enough about me

PROFESSIONAL BIO

My name is Phillip LeConte, fortunate son of Robert and June LeConte. I make my home in Austin, Texas with my two housemates Sam and Atticus – a catahoula leopard-dog and a black lab. 

Where to begin: journalist, photographer, multi-media wiz-bang, proud founding-father of two non-profit organizations...

Indeed, to the casual (possibly ducking) observer, my careening professional trajectory appears to be more of a hazard-bound slice.

There is, never-the-less, a consistent theme running throughout my professional career. Look closer and you'll see I have spent the past forty years doing essentially the same thing – solving problems and expressing the world around me using words words and images.

The only two clubs in my bag.

The Words

After receiving a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from the University of Illinois, I spent the next several years wondering in the wilderness of freelance writing, spec screenplays and unit publicity for one-hour dramas.

My article “The Psychologist as TV Guide" [Psychology Today, April1986], a profile of the Harvard Medical School's noted professor of psychiatry Alvin Poussaint, then psychological consultant to "The Bill Cosby Show", was the catalyst in creating a cottage industry of psychological consultants to sitcoms.

In addition to being cited in various professional journals, including the textbook Values and Knowledge by Terrance Brown, the piece led – like a lamb to the slaughter – to my position as Assistant Editor of the California Psychologist. The post was my first encounter with a "personal computer," which I recall being as freakishly eccentric in behavior as the members and staff of the California Psychological Association.

The post did afford me the opportunity to interview internationally renown child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. My youthful question as to the relevance of Freud lead to a diatribe so cruel and protracted that for a moment I actually though of myself as a colleague. (Following Bettelheim's suicide in 1990, the youngsters he'd made cry [other than myself] coined a new name for their former caregiver – "Brutal Bettelheim." I felt a kinship)

Shortly thereafter, I conspired to only interview creative artists and public figures I admired. These included profiles of Roy Scheider, Sally Fields, director Robert Benton, Peter Weller and journalist Bill Moyers -- whose work with Joseph Campbell is still a magnificent influence.

My final year in Los Angeles alternated between the screenwriting ["The Albacore Club" and "The Beat", co-written to writer/director Noah Stern] and the creative malnourishment I experienced as a unit publicist for Dick Clark and publicity coordinator for "21 Jumpstreet".

In 1988, I moved to Austin Texas, where I served as a programming consultant to non-profit organizations. It was during this time that I worked extensively with Alice Sessions, wife of then-FBI director William Sessions on a program for youth.

As a journalist I moved into the political arena, interviewing Texas Attorney General Dan Morales (before his conviction) and then-Texas state legislator and future governor  Rick Perry. 

In 1992, I co-created the Junior Police Academy.  A tribute to my father, a veteran police officer, the program introduces young people to their responsibilities as citizens in a democracy.

In her profile of JPA, Christine Fletcher of KEYE News in Austin cited the program as being instrumental in the "remarkable" drop in crime on school campuses in Austin. Today the program is taught in schools across the country.

The Images

Photography remains my great passion. I am an Austin-based documentary photographer. 

If the term "documentary photographer" leaves you a bit in the dark -- prepare yourself for some hopefully well-metered illumination. Take a moment to stroll through the galleries on Arkdog.com.

These still and moving images define -- in ways that words cannot -- the immortal spirit I name "ArkDog".

A gallery showing of my work "From Austin to LA and Back" held on December 15, 2008.

Upon my 50th birthday in 2011, having effectively run out the clock on any possibility of a mid-life crisis, I opted rather to mark the milestone with an equally cathartic, yet infinitely more dignified hardback book, "Light".

While the photographs in "Light" were captured in recent months, they nevertheless reflect a sense of life a half-a-hundred years in the making. Some offer a glimpse into my personal life, while others capture that immortal spirit – what Joseph Campbell described as "the zoom of being in the world!" 

To those of you who seek to preserve things bright and beautiful, great and small, wise and wonderful -- welcome to Arkdog.com.

Phillip LeConte July 2011
Arkdog.com