How to recover photos from faulty phone?

Hi, I have been asked to retrieve some photos from a Lumia 520 that does not boot. When I power it on it displays a "sad smiley" icon and that is all. Then every so often it will restart. When I plug it into a PC and run various recovery software the software reports that "no device is connected." The flash memory on these phones is a soldered on (ball solder) IC. I don't want to try a hard reset because it will wipe the storage, which defeats the purpose of the repair. The phone itself is expendable - the owner simply would like to get the photos. How can I accomplish this?