Moments in time: Tokoroa photographer shares decades of local images

Thursday, 2 July 2026

Before every phone had a camera, Chris Williams was already recording life in Tokoroa and the South Waikato on film, one carefully planned shot at a time.

For decades, he’s photographed the faces, places, sports teams, schools, churches and community events that helped define Tokoroa, often at his own cost and with no certainty the images would be widely seen.

Now, more than 200 prints from the long-term Tokoroa stalwart’s film photography collection will go on show at Gallery 77 on Bridge St, offering a record of about four decades of life in the region.

The free exhibition will run from Tuesday, July 7, to Friday, July 10.

Williams, 73, has tens of thousands of images, most of them taken on film and developed in a darkroom he built on his property.

The exhibition will focus on his favourite work, and the people from across Tokoroa and the wider district which he says were “all moments in time”.

“To me it was always people,” Williams said.

“People always interested me … I was never really interested in landscapes or that sort of thing.”

Many of the photographs show people in places that will be familiar to Tokoroa residents, a lot of whom Williams says have passed on, as well as school pupils from the 1990s who are now adults.

Williams said the exhibition would include photographs from local events, the carving and blessing of Tokoroa’s talking poles, RSA gatherings, Pacific Island church events, sports, schools, and community occasions.

The collection is largely made up of photographs taken before digital cameras became dominant, and Williams says “that matters”.

With film, each frame came at a cost. There was no screen to check the result, and no option to take unlimited images.

Before going to an event, he would plan what he wanted to capture. At rugby matches, he might focus on lineouts one week and scrums the next.

“You didn’t know what the hell you had in the camera,” he said.

“Did I get the shot I was looking for?”

That uncertainty shaped the way he worked. After taking the photographs, Williams would return to his darkroom, develop the negative, wait for it to dry, and then print the image.

“The satisfaction of developing that, and printing that photo was something else.”

He said film photography required imagination and patience, and a missed shot could not be recovered.

“If you didn’t get what you wanted, that opportunity didn’t come back,” he said.

Apart from wedding photography he and his late wife Caron used to do, he said much of his work was not commercial.

“I want to leave my mark,” he said. “To me, my photos are my legacy.”

“Nobody else was doing them back then,” he said. “Those photos, nobody else has got them.”

Williams’ interest in photography began at home. His mother was an “avid photographer” who used a Box Brownie camera at a time when cameras were not common. His father-in-law was also an influence.

“His composition was out of this world,” Williams said.

His own photography developed further when Waikato Times staffer, and former editor, Roy Pilott encouraged him and gave him guidance.

When Pilott went overseas, Williams was given film and sent out to take photographs.

He remembers being given T-Max 400 rolls of 36 exposures and thinking they were “like gold”.

After one assignment in Tokoroa, including sport and other local events, he had six photographs published in the paper in one week.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I thought, hell, I might be getting good at this.”

Although photography was his dream, and his passion, Williams said family responsibilities meant he could not pursue it formally when an opportunity arose to attend Elam School of Fine Arts.

Instead, he worked for more than 20 years at Kinleith and continued photography outside work.