Gene's Camera: the supply trade's own 87 years

1939–2026 — Picture Equipment Company to Gene's Camera

The store that armed the amateurs: Every camera club and working photographer in this section needed a counter to buy film, paper and chemicals at, and for most of the period it was one store. Gene's Camera, at 513 Lincoln Way West, began in 1939 as the Picture Equipment Company; later that same year Eugene Mutzl bought it and renamed it Gene's Photo Shop, and he kept it for more than forty years. In 1981 Jack St. Pierre bought the store — it became Gene's Camera Store — and kept it forty-three years, opening three additional locations in the trade's fat years, all afterward closed, leaving the Lincoln Way West original. In 2025 Jon Gilchrist and Melaney Miller took the store over and shortened the name to Gene's Camera. The Tribune marked the store's continuity on 29 May 2026, and on 3 June 2026 Gilchrist and Miller presented "The Long Exposure: Photography History and a Community Camera Store" in the History Museum's Insights in History series — the supply trade lecturing on its own history, in the museum that keeps the city's pictures. A store is not a studio, but the survival of a photographic retailer in one city from 1939 to the smartphone era is part of this section's record: the trade's infrastructure, at the same address line, for eighty-seven years.

Sources:

1. Gene's Camera (genescamera.com), the store's About page — founded 1939 as Picture Equipment Company; Eugene Mutzl's purchase later in 1939 and Gene's Photo Shop (forty-plus years); Jack St. Pierre's 1981 purchase and Gene's Camera Store (forty-three years; three additional locations, later closed); the 2025 takeover by Jon Gilchrist and Melaney Miller; 513 Lincoln Way W.
2. South Bend Tribune, 29 May 2026 — the store's history and continuity, as published.
3. The History Museum, Insights in History (3 June 2026) — Jon Gilchrist and Melaney Miller, "The Long Exposure: Photography History and a Community Camera Store."