Taro Mizutani

Taro Mizutani is a Japanese photographer, director and artist born in Tokyo in 1975. He graduated from the Department of Photography at Tokyo Polytechnic University and began working independently as a photographer in 1998. His early practice included experimental work with large-format cameras for fashion and culture magazines. He later built a broad fashion career across editorial, advertising and brand imagery, with clients including Hermès, Valentino, UNDERCOVER, Moncler, HYKE, UNIQLO and Supreme.

Mizutani’s work extends into moving image and independent art. He has directed collection films and music videos, published books including Here Comes The Blues, Chaos / Balance and Lethe, and exhibited photographic work in Tokyo galleries. Chaos / Balance documented five seasons around UNDERCOVER’s Paris collections, giving his relationship with the house a substantial photographic record before he joined UNDERCOVER PRODUCTION as a named founding member in 2018. His later UNDERCOVER work includes collection photography alongside editorial and artistic projects.

Mizutani approaches fashion photography as a record of people, atmosphere and the culture of a particular moment. His practice grew from analogue and large-format experimentation into portraits, landscapes and fashion images that keep attention on light, gesture and incidental detail. He has described photography as open to the viewer’s interpretation and has treated contemporary culture itself as material that can be documented through fashion.

This sensibility suits an ongoing relationship with UNDERCOVER, where backstage access, lookbooks and campaign work can carry atmosphere alongside information about the clothes. His parallel use of still photography, film, books and exhibitions lets a project develop across several formats. UNDERCOVER PRODUCTION gives that practice a collective setting in which photographic authorship can interact directly with art direction, music and moving image.