Fakir Musafar

American performance artist, photographer, body modification expert and practitioner (10 August 1930, Aberdeen, South Dakota — 1 August 2018, Menlo Park, California). Roland Loomis, who changed his name to Fakir Musafar in 1977, is widely regarded as the founder of the "Modern Primitive" movement. He specialized in BDSM and body modification, extreme piercing, suspension and binding, contortionism and other similar practices and activities. Loomis began practicing flesh hook suspensions in the mid-1960s, inspired by his anthropological research. Fakir Musafar appeared in the 1985 documentary film Dances Sacred and Profane and Monica Treut's 1988 drama Die Jungfrauen Maschine ("The Virgin Machine"). His work was featured in Modern Primitives '89 book, printed by RE/Search Publications and co-edited by V. Vale and Andrea Juno, alongside essays and interviews with many prominent tattoo artists inspired by Fakir's work, such as Greg Kulz, Leo Zulueta, Vyvyn Lazonga and Henk Schiffmacher a.k.a. Henky Penky. In May 2018, Fakir Musafar publicly announced he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He passed away, aged 87, three months later.