A few years ago my son’s point-&-shoot need­ed a sim­ple repair. I realised I had no idea where to go to get cam­eras fixed. Were there even cam­era-repair­ers any more? When they break, don’t you just buy anoth­er cam­era?

A friend said “Oh, there’s that guy on Jack­son Street — he fix­es every­thing”.

“That guy” was Phil Jacobs, and he runs his cam­era repair busi­ness from home in Petone. When we came to drop the cam­era off, Phil took us into his work­shop, and I imme­di­ate­ly knew we were in good hands:

Black & white photo of Phil Jacobs at his workshop desk, which is covered in cameras in various states of disassembly.
Pho­to: Simon Hoyle

 

Of course, it turns out Phil is a leg­end in the pho­to­graph­ic com­mu­ni­ty. He has been repair­ing cam­eras for 40 years, and, as Welling­ton pho­tog­ra­ph­er James Gilberd puts it:

“Almost every pho­tog­ra­ph­er who has worked in this city has used his ser­vices at some time or anoth­er, and in an indi­rect but impor­tant way he has made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to pho­tog­ra­phy as an art form, a busi­ness, and a means of per­son­al and social expres­sion.”

Sad­ly, Phil is now ter­mi­nal­ly ill, and – unable to work, or sup­port his fam­i­ly, includ­ing his elder­ly par­ents – is under major finan­cial pres­sure.

So James, togeth­er with fel­low pho­tog­ra­phers Mark Beehre and John Williams, has organ­ised a ben­e­fit auc­tion to raise funds. The auc­tion includes works by both estab­lished and emerg­ing pho­tog­ra­phers and will be held on Fri­day 30th Novem­ber, in The Pit at Te Ara Hihiko, Massey Uni­ver­si­ty’s brand new Art and Design School build­ing. Every­body is wel­come, and there will be pho­tographs to suit all pock­ets. As James says:

“Whether you’re a seri­ous col­lec­tor or some­one who’s nev­er bought a pho­to­graph as a piece of art­work before, there’ll be some­thing here for you. Massey Uni­ver­si­ty have gra­cious­ly pro­vid­ed us with a superb venue and we’re look­ing for­ward to a very suc­cess­ful event.”

There will be a pre­view event at Pho­to­space Gallery, 5pm on Mon­day 26 Novem­ber, with view­ing con­tin­u­ing there until 4pm Thurs­day.

The event at The Pit on Fri­day starts with drinks & enter­tain­ment at 6, and the auc­tion itself kicks off at 7.

More info at www.philjacobsbenefit.org