Introduction
Tetsuya Nagato is a Japanese art director and artist born in Tokyo in 1970. After high school he moved to the United States, then returned to Japan and began working professionally as an art director in 1996. His career spans record sleeves, music videos, advertising, documentary film and visual direction for artists including UA and RADWIMPS. Fashion work has included art direction for UNDERCOVER publications and KIJIMA TAKAYUKI lookbooks. In 2003 he received an Excellence Award in digital art at the Japan Media Arts Festival and a Tokyo Wonder Wall award.
Nagato also maintains an independent art practice across collage, photography and moving image, with work shown in solo and group exhibitions. In 2018 he became a named founding member of UNDERCOVER PRODUCTION alongside Jun Takahashi, Taro Mizutani and Katsuhide Morimoto. The team was established to create advertising and video for UNDERCOVER and later worked on visual projects for external clients and musicians. Nagato’s Undercover role is centred on art direction and image construction, with Takahashi retaining fashion-design authorship of the collections.
Design ethos
Nagato’s work moves across media without treating graphic design, photography and film as isolated disciplines. Collage is a recurring part of his independent art practice, and his professional work combines typography, found or produced imagery, sequencing and moving image to build a coherent identity around music, fashion or a specific cultural subject. The result is an art-direction practice concerned with how separate fragments acquire meaning through editing and placement.
Within UNDERCOVER PRODUCTION, that approach gives the house an image-making capability that can extend beyond campaign stills. Advertising, music video and film can be developed by a familiar team with a shared visual history. Nagato’s contribution is therefore strongest at the level of framing, graphic language and direction, supporting the wider world around UNDERCOVER without displacing Takahashi’s authorship of the clothes.
Disclaimer
Career history
2018
Nagato's role in UNDERCOVER PRODUCTION connects art direction to the house's broader photographic and moving-image practice from the team's 2018 launch.
2018
UNDERCOVER PRODUCTION formalised a recurring image-making team around Takahashi, Nagato, Mizutani and Morimoto in 2018. The group works across art direction, photography and moving image.
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