With a deep attachment to film, Tobita indulged himself in the bachelor’s life until, at more than 40 years of age, he reached a turning point. This came in the form of an idea to revive and build upon the miniature garden-play of his childhood, to create dioramas of his most cherished movie scenes as they floated up in his memory. With each piece taking two months to complete, Tobita has spent twenty five years creating and photographing up to one hundred and fifty miniature dioramas. 

These numerous “images belonging to others, that had somehow slipped into me before I was aware of it” were steadily peeling and dropping away like falling leaves. To preserve them, the three-dimensional replicas were built and then captured in a single photograph.

​Memories, etched onto a single instant-film photograph. Rather than documenting to film, Tobita chooses the immediacy of the Polaroid. It is a deliberate decision to avoid duplication, as duplication would be meaningless. It is in this unique philosophy of “the single photograph” that we are given a crystallized glimpse of those fleeting visions of Hideo Tobita’s world.