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