#roland loomis

[travsd]

On Fakir Musafar, Piercing, and a Piece of Sideshow News

Born this day, Fakir Musafar (Roland Loomis, 1930-2018). Loomis was a lot of things over the course of his life: an advertising executive, an Arthur Murray Dance Instructor, a demolitions specialist with the U.S. Army. He had degrees in both electrical engineering and creative writing. But what he is best known for is being an influential pioneer of piercing and body modification. Obviously,…

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[passingelsewhere]

Fakir Musafar, aka Roland Loomis. Commonly credited as the originator of the "Modern Primitive" movement. At an early age he began experimenting with body modification, expanding from simple piercing into other, more obscure forms. Unlike many modern "freaks" Loomis sought mystical experience through his mods, studying the culture and history of the peoples who originated each particular mod. He still performs modifications today, at age 82.

[intricatepiercings-blog]

Did you know that...

One of the most influential figures in the rise of the modern body piercing is Fakir Musafar, the father of modern primitivism. Born as Roland Loomis in 1930, he grew up close to an Indian reservation in South Dakota, which inspired his imagination at an early age. Fakir is one of a few modern body art pioneers whose fascination with body adornment and modification and compulsion to experiment on his own body contributed to the existence of piercing as we know it today. He coined the term modern primitives to represent what he felt to be the connection between the practice of body modification and the spiritual use of piercing and other rituals, often taken directly from tribal practices. He views modern primitivism as an antidote to the superficiality of modern life. A handful of individuals - including Fakir - were deeply affected by the images of indigenous body art that appeared in National Geographic magazine. A number of these early devotees were inspired to emulate some of the modifications they viewed in those pages.

[fashionsuggestion]

Fakir Musafar (Roland Loomis, 1930), father of the modern Primitive movement: 45 centimeters of waist in his Golden Age.