The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

The Evolution of an Underground Body Modification Artist with Jerome Abramovitch

Jerome Abramovitch took the art of body modification to another level, through performing acts such as cutting off one of his fingers and inflating his forehead (which lead him into the Guinness Book of World Records). In this awe-inspiring chat, he walks us through his evolution as an underground body modification artist.

An early interest in tribal/aboriginal cultures
Finding what speaks to us and reconnecting with it
How we become cultural byproducts of our environment
Staying true to yourself as an artist through a career
Why self awareness is essential to everything in one’s life
Separating the artist persona from the artist as a person
Balancing artistic production and professional goals
The 33% of magic that happens in any artistic project
How a background as a musician influenced Jerome’s photography
Jerome’s body modification experiments
Getting in the Guinness book of world records for the largest forehead inflation
The experience of cutting off his own finger

Jerome Abramovitch is a Montreal-based photographer.

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Duration:: 1h 16m
Broadcast on:: 23 Jul 2014
Audio Format:: other

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Jerome, welcome to the Automastakable Creative. Thanks for taking the time to join us. Well, thank you for taking the time to talk to me and to review the stuff that I'm doing these days. Yeah, my pleasure. So, I came across you by way of our former guest and mutual friend Julian Smith who seems to have a pretty solid taste for the strange and unusual and outstanding when it comes to what's going on on the internet, which is why I asked him for references and he gave me your name. So, can you tell us a bit about your background, your story, and kind of the journey before the journey that has led you to the work that you're doing today? Yeah, totally. I mean, everything kind of bounces around in different spheres of connections to go from Julian, how we know each other is from the quote-unquote body modification scene, everything that's tattooing, piercing scarification, and what that world was in 1999 was very different than what it is today, the progression of the internet and the accessibility of the information. So, that's how he and I know each other and in terms of what would make my work strange and unusual, that is one of the elements in terms of what I have done as a body artist in terms of using my body as art, as well as as a photographer, the people who I photograph. My main definition in life as an artist and individual is photographer. I take photos of people, the people I shoot are real. There's always something that connects us and that is what drives me to do what I do. To go beyond that in terms of what makes me different, I've always had an interest in tribal, aboriginal cultures. I grew up on National Geographic magazine, so for me to look at women with stretch snacks and people with stressier loads or a bone in their septum, that made more sense than anything that I saw as fashion in my own world. At least in terms of what drives us all as human beings, I feel that modern technology has taken away from our bodies. We're very disconnected, we're very cerebral, and I think that this is something that you and I can discuss. But essentially, I think that my first explorations were with my body towards the outside world. In terms of what gave me an understanding of myself as an individual, and I think that self-awareness, to touch on any topics that we can discuss, whether it be business or art, self-awareness is key to anything we do in life. And I think that that has always been my greatest drive, was just to follow my curiosities, to explore the things that are out there, and to see how that made me feel within my environment if we use our five senses to interact with the outside world. So a very wide answer, I mean, in terms of who I am as a performance artist. I think that for me to speak of myself, I end up being different characters, there's who I am as an individual, there's who I am as a photographer, and there's who I am or was as a performance artist. And what I say is to compare what I did back in the day as a performance artist is a little bit talking about Alice Cooper. She's Alice Cooper when he's wearing makeup on stage, but when you talk to him after the show, he's just been in Fortnay and he likes baseball, you know, and golf. So I think that I wear many different hats, and it is as much of a challenge as it is a joy to play within those different characters. When I talk about myself, I talk about myself, and it's very hard to separate who I am versus who the artist is and how people perceive me and what I do. Okay, so that's one of my hot buttons lately, so I do want to spend actually a significant amount of time talking about that. But let's get back to this idea of body modification. I mean, that's a very unusual art form. You're probably the first person who I've had here, really, who actually views, who has talked to me about body modification and tattoos as an art form. And you know, one of the things that I'm always curious about is how sort of the primary starting point or foundational piece influences and shapes everything else in your life and in this world and how you see the world. So I'd love for you to talk about how, you know, sort of working through this idea of body modification, tattoos and changes has really shaped the lens through which you view the world as a career, as a professional, as a person. Yeah, it's key to who I am and what I've gone through independent of reason or origin. Whatever it is within tribal cultures and aboriginal rituals that I identified with, there is something, and I'll say this, as a white, suburban North American, you know. I saw something about tribal warriors that spoke to me more than just, you know, whatever you see on TV and whatever we see as popular culture. And I saw more value and depth in what those people did. As simple as, you know, if we go back to, you know, maybe in the '90s, bungee jumping, well bungee jumping is awesome, but that comes from a ritual that has much greater significance. And I appreciate the nuance between what bungee jumping is as, you know, a generation X thrill seeking sport. But I also understand what it was for those warriors to actually, you know, tie vines around their ankles and jump off this crazy thing that they built for whatever reason that they did. You know, and for me to know what tribe did what, for what reasons is secondary to what it was in terms of them exploring stuff. I can jump into, you know, if we look at menstruation, I'm completely off topic, but for me it's what I see are modern world versus, you know, what more tribal people are into. We look at menstruation, well, within certain tribes, there are boys that go through puberty that they don't understand why their body doesn't release blood. The blood has something to do with life and all that. So they have a ritual where they take these really sharp leaves and they shove them up their sinuses to bleed from their brain or sinuses or whatever. And I look at that as a modern person and I'm like, they're trying to tie into what the women are going through. And at least they're exploring something as, you know, somebody who has an awareness of medicine and science, I wouldn't be prone to sympathize with my girlfriend by shoving sharp leaves up my sinuses. But those things fascinate me. And I think that those have always been at the origins of who we were as, you know, human beings exploring this planet. And I look at that as much fascinated that we've got satellites floating in space and we've put, you know, humans on the moon as much as, you know, the fire in the wheel still continued to fascinate me on a daily basis. We forget the magic of those things. So as much as I love my technology and tablets and phones and all that, I also look at wheels as fires things that just continue to blow my mind on a daily basis. So wide answer, maybe you can narrow me down in terms of where this can go. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. You know, one, one of the things you said at the very beginning was very early on in your childhood. And that's a very similar version of this question to a lot of people is something about tribal culture spoke to you. Yeah. And you know, I think that when I talk to people on this show, that actually ends up being one of the common things. There is something that speaks to them that becomes the driving force behind the work that they do. And I think that we lose that as adults and indeed, indeed, very curious how we get it back. You know, I think the key is to never losing it in the first place. And that has been essential in my life. But also to modernize things, I talk a lot about Aboriginal stuff and National Geographic. And that is twofold. I remember seeing the rituals, but I also remember being fascinated by the photography. So I think that also had an effect on me later on because I saw some of the best images that the world had to offer through National Geographic. So thank them for doing some early quality stuff all that time, you know. But to bring it to a more modern thing, I look at rock and roll. If we look at the '70s or even before that, the '60s, if you start with Jimi Hendrix or you go to Led Zeppelin, then you go into anything else that was more punk metal, and then you get into my thing, which is metal. If you go from the early '80s, Metallica, Slayer, and all that. And so you draw a parallel between rock and roll culture, sex, the kind of post-industrial apocalyptic thing that people were going through in the '90s of what Y2K was, of what 1999 was. I think there was a lot of magic in those years, and I think that also shaped me in a lot of ways. And I say that that we're all product of our environment, and I look at people that come from the '70s, and there's this certain flavor to who those people are, and I look at people from the '80s. And I can look at myself now with a little bit of perspective and go, "You know what? I'm totally a product of the '90s and what that was." And it was a really magical time, because we were, to a certain degree, the first ones seeing what the internet was. But I also go back to what, if I talk about music, I remember sending $4 in international postage to Czechoslovakia to get a demo tape from an underground band. There was a magic feeling in that, and that is something that we lost now. So I think no matter what, I've always followed counterculture and whatever you might consider to be underground things. And I've just always followed my own thing in terms of what was happening, without having consciousness of it at the time. We connect the dots later, but I think I was just at the right place, at the right time, for a lot of things. So let me ask you about this idea of product of environment. This is always one of those things that fascinates me, because I always look at how our past influences the way we show up in the world today. And in some cases, it serves us, and in others, it actually sabotages us, and I'm wondering, is it possible in your mind to overcome the parts that sabotage us, and if so, how? Great question. Right. Well, in terms of what sabotages us is, I think the best way to answer that is remaining true to yourself. If we look at the concessions that we make, and that is something that's progressive in the sense that I never had a career plan, I never expected my work to be what it became, it just kind of happened on its own. So I kind of followed it, and it became an organic thing where I reacted to it, and it reacted to me, and it kind of bounced back and forth as we went forward. Now, in terms of being an underground artist, there's a lot of stuff that, let's say, you know, the things that I've done early on, you know, in my early 20s when it's a little bit more raw, I've always been very clear, I'm not going to be a politician, so those things would never, you know, in any way affect me in terms of what I want to do professionally as an artist, but if you Google me, and you look at what I did early on in my career versus what I'm doing now, where do I want the emphasis to be, you know, and I think that's the evolution of an artist, that, you know, am I living up to the hype of what people think I was, or am I able to maintain who I am today, and how I've evolved, and what I'm doing now, and to keep interested in that, that there's always attention to what my voice is as an artist, that no matter what I do, it's always Jerome, and that I don't bend either way to what I think people want me to be doing. You know, it's interesting you bring that up because I think that there's a temptation to do that, isn't there? It's funny because, I mean, I even wrote about this in my book, I said, you know, we keep basically watering down our work until it reaches the masses, and the very thing that made it so magical ends up being gone from it, I mean, I see this over and over again, you know, my favorite example of this is events, when people plan events, somebody will start out with something very small and very intimate, and there's a magic to it, and the moment they say, you know what, I'm going to try to blow this up into something massive, the magic goes away. Agreed, and, you know, I mean, that that'll touch base to like, I don't know if I think about Burning Man, I don't think Burning Man is any less magical today, I've never gone, but I think that that magic of what it was initially is very different from, you know, people taking time off of work and booking and planning everything out and going, it's different today than it was then. Another thing that I always, you know, and this is maybe the dialogue that I have with myself as an artist, I look at, let's say, musicians, because I have a background as a musician, and that's what I did before doing photography, to use Metallica as an example, I think that their first four albums were phenomenal, that's what Metallica is to me. Later on, it's just musicians using the name Metallica that just doesn't have the same fire as they did earlier on, you know, and I don't mean to knock them because they've had different things, and I think Metallica is doing some cool stuff today. On the flip side though, if I look at David Bowie, you know, and in no way am I comparing myself to any of these people, I'm just reflecting upon this as an artist who must separate myself from what my career path is. I look at somebody like David Bowie, who he was in the 70s, is in no way similar to who he is today, but he remains David Bowie, and I think that anything that David Bowie has really done over the course of his career really lives out to, you know, this is what this man does, and he does it very well, and I think people that enjoy what he does will continue to enjoy his evolution as well. You know, I think he's been an avant-garde in many ways, so it's just in terms of my own challenges, that's what I hope to do. I hope to keep something magical in what I do, and to really do it for myself, and if other people enjoy it, great, and I think that also touches something is I have become a business, you know, if I do my photography and, you know, it's mostly fine art, so therefore my market is whatever I shoot, people want to potentially buy this and put it up on their wall, so I'm always thinking, am I doing something that somebody wouldn't want to put on their wall, and I, you know, don't think I'm compromising because I look at it when I myself want to put it up on my wall, so, you know, I try to satisfy myself just as much as I satisfy people, but then there are also other things where I, you know, I like cinema a lot more than, let's say, like magazines or fashion, if I can use that horizontal versus vertical thing as an image maker. I've done a lot of really cool horizontal images where I've had to learn that when a magazine contacts me and they're like, okay, great image, we'd use, we'd love to use it on our cover, do you have like a vertical version of that? I'm like, no, we got to crop it, and it doesn't have the same magic. So now as a businessman, every time I do something, I might be instinctively drawn towards shooting it horizontally, but then I'm thinking I've got to cover my base and shoot it vertically just in case somebody wants to use it on a magazine. You know, am I making any compromise in terms of what I do, you know, but I'm playing the game differently because there's different parameters influencing me. You know, it's interesting because I think it's absolutely an interesting balancing act of creating what the audience wants, but creating what you want, you know, and I always think back to, you know, I saw Simon Cowell in this master class with Oprah where he's talking about taste, and I think one of the favorite things he said, he said, you know, he said, I basically think that if I like it, the audience will like it. Which isn't always true as well. So no, it's a tough act to balance. I mean, some of my work that has been the best received is stuff that I didn't like that just showing it to people around me, they're like, no, this is great, you got to put it out there. And I think that also goes to show that as an artist, you can be positively influenced by the people around you just as much as you could be negatively influenced. You know, if you look at musicians that have bad managers or, you know, people that really have great producers, that can make a world of difference. And the reason why I mention that is I'm alone in everything that I do. And for me to reflect upon every single possible move of the chess game, yeah, it does become an exercise of administration of how I handle stuff, you know. And I'm honored that I get to reach out to people now and that I get to build up a team of mentors or people that I can reach out to as professional peers or whatever to get feedback on the work that I'm doing. And I guess, if anything, that also means that back in the day, I would just do what I did and I threw it out there. And now I'm filtering things because I want to make sure that I'm operating as intelligently as I can with the pieces of the puzzle that I have. And that's been an interesting thing because I don't want to play a game, but I know that a game must be played because you can play it to your advantage or you can just not follow the curve. So I think that's been interesting as well in terms of how I handle myself or how I plan things. As an example, photo contests, most of the photo contests start January, go until like May for the submission period and cover the workshop the year before. Well, now, when I produce work, I'm like, okay, if I want to get into these photo contests and they have different categories, whether it be portrait or conceptual art or sports, in my head, I'm giving myself a checklist that if I want to move forward professionally, I should be submitting to these contests. And I know that I got to submit a lot before I actually ever get some mentioned somewhere. It's statistics. It's probability. The more you participate, the more something will come out of it. So it's there for balancing my artistic production with my professional goals at the same time. So that's been an interesting thing in terms of operating this as a business instead of just when it comes to my photography. Yeah. You know, it's funny because I think that we sometimes neglect that and it's also one of those things. I mean, I see often we will be tempted to sell out to some degree, which I think will make a perfect setup for my next question, but I want to make a comment about this about sort of, you know, knowing what the audience wants and figuring out what you want. And you're right. I mean, there are times when I've done interviews here where I thought that was amazing and it didn't get the response that I thought would end there. Other times when like, this is shit. And people are like, that was amazing. It strikes a chord with people on different levels and we never know how and that's part of the magic as well. Yeah. And if anything, I'd like to maybe go take a tangent on this, I'd like to say that anything that I have done artistically or professionally has always had a 33% of magic involved. And I think that everybody has that magic in anything that they do, but I cannot take credit for anything that has happened or even the people that have been involved or helped or contributed in any way. There's always this random, this random element to anything that anybody does, you know, being at the right place, the right time, the right person, same things. And I think that's part of the fun too is no matter what I do, and this will go back to maybe something that Julian was saying, I don't know what I'm doing. I really don't, especially based on the fact that I never had a career plan. I just wanted to take photos and I just wanted to take photos that I thought were interesting to me and they ended up being interesting to other people. But I don't know what I'm doing today any more than what I was doing before. I just have more confidence that I was like, hey, I made it this far by just kind of improvising and putting one foot forward in front of the next. So what happens when I start connecting the dots with intent? And I think that's an important part of anything we do is always the intent that we have. And I think that's important in terms of the drive. So for you to go into selling out, there's some interesting stuff to cover on there if you wanted to ask that question. Yeah, let's get into that, but I want to ask you about two things before we do that, that kind of caught my attention. One is sort of infusing everything we do with the magic and, you know, one, I want to know, how do you make sure that you bring that to it on a consistent basis, that 33% and then the other part, I want to get clear on how you connect the dots with intent. What does that start and what does that really mean? Right, I mean, in my path, how I've gone to where I'm at today, I think that I just kind of figured out that I've built a niche market as I went, and that intent was to see what I could do for myself without, in any way, compromising, but also satisfy people. And a funny example is early on in my career, I did, you know, a lot of freaky sex, drugs, rock and roll stuff. And I still had a normal job, and therefore, I wasn't operating under my own name, and I wasn't using dromabrowwich.com. I came up with chapter nine, photography.com, and set that up so people cannot Google my name or find me. And the things that I did reacted to a wide audience of people who really liked the freaky stuff that I was doing, and I was also working as a bike messenger at the time, and I like bikes, and I think bikes are fun, so I've got a whole series of photos based on bike messengers and urban bike culture. And what happened over time, which I never expected, right? I was scared of hiding all the sex stuff, all the gay stuff, all the fetish S&M stuff from, you know, potential employers finding it and thinking that I would be an unsavory character and whatever. So I was trying to hide the sex stuff, but what happened was all the sex stuff ended up being my most popular work, you know, as much with men, women, straight, hetero, gay, whatever. And what ended up happening was all the freaks and perverts were sending me emails. Like, a lot of emails to the point was like, I can't believe this. And like, we don't care about all this bike stuff. What's up with all this bike messenger stuff? We don't like it. We want to see more naked, freaky, sexy people, you know, like, straight, gay, whatever. So I was like, I never even saw that coming. I thought that the sex stuff could cause me problems when in the end it was, you know, the urban bike messenger culture that was a total turnoff to all the freaks and perverts who liked my wilder stuff. And I ended up creating a sub portal just for my bike messenger work going, like, all right, if the only people who liked the stuff is the bike crowd, I'll do something just for them and feed that and not mix the sex with the bikes. Because in my head, in my world, these are the things that I like. And if you like bikes and you like sex, you might like what I do. But it was, it was an interesting thing for me to reposition myself, quote, unquote, professionally to subdivide certain things. And also, you know, when I do anything as well, I'm straight, but being involved in the fetish community, everybody around me is poly, gay, whatever, you name it. All the variations out there are people that I consider friends. So when I do work, I'm also thinking, you know, am I doing stuff to satisfy the gay market? If I do stuff with sexy women, I'd like to do stuff with sexy men to, you know, diversify that from my crowd. And then it's just a question of putting intent into, you know, what I prioritize. So let's do this. Let's shift gears a little bit. And I want to talk about two different things. One is you mentioned a background in music, and I didn't want to let that slide, because I'm always fascinated by musicians having been a tuba playing band geek in high school, who never got to be a cool musician, which is probably, you know, I'm sure you as a musician were much cooler, but music has always fascinated me. I'm really curious how, you know, your background as a musician has shaped and influenced the stories you choose to tell, and, you know, your work as an artist. You know what? It's cool, because the two things that I'll identify as being an interview where I need speak in these words is I consider myself a man of sounds and images, right? So music speaks to me in any language, and images speak to me no matter what they are. And I find that there's something in those visual and musical art forms that stimulate my brain in a way that I don't master with words. And what you were saying about core, uncool, I devoted much of my adolescence to heavy metal music, and when I say heavy metal, I'll go from heavy metal to classical to blues to jazz to you name it. If it's good music and it's intelligent and it's played by great musicians, I want to learn from it, and I tried to mix a little bit of everything and what I did musically. But I didn't think it was any good. I was very good technically. I could play classical music, I could play metal note for note, but I'd listen to bluesmen or jazz players, and what they can get out of one note was more than what I feel I could transmit to the instrument. And you know, things happen as they do. My band broke up, my high school band broke up, and I ended up just being a guy with a guitar. It was a lot more fun to play in a band and to jam with people than just to play solo, and I didn't think it was doing anything that good. And it was at the same time that I started doing photography, because I was taking photos of the band for promo material and all that, so I was doing photography before I picked it up in college and before I consciously dedicated myself to it. But I felt that I was better at storytelling with photography, photography for me to get back to that 33% of magic. There is something about capturing that moment in time, whether it be a literal recreation of an event that has happened as it is, the way we see with news footage, if you look at classic Viet Cong execution shot from that time period, we all know what that image is and that is striking, versus other things that capture a moment in time that can be false and can be theatrical. So I just started looking at things as storytelling, telling people stories and perhaps telling my own through those people, and I think that's where the connection comes to music, is good music, makes us feel stuff, talks to us, gets a gut reaction. And what I've always wanted to do with my photography is just to freeze that person for that one extra second and get them to look at the image and question it. Whatever it stimulates within them, if I've done that, then I think that I've done something good as a photographer, so that's kind of hard what my drive is in terms of making my images and how I want it to talk to people in terms of telling a story or making them reflect upon things. Spark something uncommon this holiday with just the right gift from uncommon goods. 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By designing glasses in-house and selling directly to customers, they're able to offer prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Warby Parker glasses are made from premium materials like impact resistant polycarbonate and custom acetate. When they start at just $95, including prescription lenses, get glasses made from the good stuff. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you. It's funny, I think the way you see photography and the way you tell stories is the way I see interviews, I want people to feel something when they've listened to this. What are people feeling now? Yeah. Yeah, no. And this is also the question. I mean, we haven't covered any of the earlier stuff that I did that might also put in context of why my photography is different. You know, right now, I'm just talking in very general terms that I think that if people are not visualizing the photos, then they might not see what is of interest about what I'm saying. So maybe that is something else that we can get into a few. Yeah. Absolutely. Let's dig into that. Let's just start dissecting it. I mean, tell me a bit more. I mean, I think that that's really where we'll go next and then we can start talking about some of the other stuff that I'm curious about. Yeah. I think what I can do is I can even volunteer the struggle of my multiple facets as an artist. If you can only, different aspects come up and I want to prioritize different things for different reasons. My involvement in the body modification scene, like circa late '90s, early 2000s, specifically, there was a very underground event called ModCon, which was basically this very hard core underground conference where people from around the world would gather who had similar interests, whether it be extreme fetishes or literally underground surgery. And a lot of stuff happened at those events. And basically what it was, it was on invitation only and you had to be heavily modified. And by heavily modified, we're talking about full tattoo work or being burned or covered in scars or even to the point of implants and amputation. I think people have seen a little bit of what that was, but it was really, really underground. And there were certain risks in terms of gathering all these people and again, what happened at some of these events. We're talking about practicing medicine without a license. I've seen some very interesting things that I never expected. I would possibly see that if you just Google ModCon or if you pick up the book, you'll see some of what those procedures were. So I kind of connected with this whole gathering and as a younger person. I was in my early 20s at the time and the age range was pretty much like 18 to mid 80s. And I was one of the youngest and the reason why I was invited to this conference was because I was burned from head to toe in terms of what I had done to myself in terms of traditional and scarification. When people get tattooed, some people get piercings. My thing in terms of what I identified with as a tribal warrior was third degree burns. So I am covered in head to toe from head to toe in third degree burns. My body is scarred. There is a reason as much aesthetic as personal to what those rituals were. I had implants. So what we now consider as a 3D art form, just like tattooing or piercing, I had some implants under my skin, teflon, titanium. And the other thing, two other things that made it of interest at that point was I cut off my finger in 1998, aka I literally one night consciously cut off my pinky finger. And some people don't even today, they don't understand the nuance between what is real and what they think might be photoshopped. But if you see photos of my hand online with a missing finger or if you see the fingertip itself, that is because that was one of the things that I did, just to see what I could explore as mine over matter and I'm writing a book about that. So that's got its whole chapter to itself. So all those things are what culminated to me being at the ModCon conference. And at some point in time, what I had seen at those conferences, where there were men straight and gay men doing scrual saline injections. And literally what they do is the same saline that you get as an IV drip at the hospital. They just take that, they plug it into their scrotum and they get a scrotum that's as big as a basketball. And it's a thrill for these guys, either aesthetically or for the sensation of it, some of them wear tights and go out to them all. And I was like, absolutely, I've seen my share of stuff, but that has seen that live. I thought, wow, that was pretty neat, even though I had no personal interest of injecting my scrotum. It's neat, but it's just not my thing. That being said, as an artist, and again, I've done some really freaky hardcore stuff, but I think the most important key that I need to emphasize right now is I have a crazy sense of humor. I have a really, really weird sense of humor, and that affects a lot of the art that I do, that some of it is very serious, like the amputation. That had clear thought and intent, and that is something that I thought about for a long time. We can get into that as well if you have specific questions. But there are other things that I do with a sense of humor that people can't nuance what is what. And all this to say that after seeing the scrotal injections at the ModCon, I was like, well, if these guys are injecting their scrotum and it's a sexual thing or whatever, what's stopping me from injecting anything anywhere else? And being a Star Trek fan, maybe, sci-fi? I thought, what if I injected my forehead right behind the hairline? See what happens. I've got people that are doctors. I know people that have medical knowledge. I did my research. That's also very important. Kids don't try this at home. I was very well surrounded in terms of getting the proper knowledge, and I think that in anything you do in life, being properly informed is key, whether it be buying a house or cutting off your finger or injecting your forehead. Do your research, and if it makes sense, do you go for it? But that being said, I thought it would be hilarious to inject my forehead, so I did. And I showed up at a friend's house one day, just like, hey, let's go out for a drink and have a smoke. Let's grab a cigar or something. And I showed up at his place wearing a suit, but with my forehead inflated. And that started off as a joke. It just started off as a joke. And to get to this point now, it started off as a joke and landed me in the Guinness Book of World Records, to the point where the editor of the book created a new category as I was the only person in the world doing this. So the world's largest forehead inflation, well, that's my record that says Jerome around which in the Guinness Book of World Records, but it started off as a joke. And the elements of that joke aren't entirely public, and I'll get into that at some other point in time. But it's just me having a really weird sense of humor thinking, hey, if I can do this, and to be very honest, it hurts. It really hurts. But I'm able to support the pain for a good joke. And that had a life of its own, that spawned its own trend in Tokyo and Osaka, where people line up to do this in clubs. It's like a rite of passage for some Japanese now. And yet they're doing it to be cool. I did it as a joke. So things happen as they do. And so all that to come back to where I am now as a professional, as a photographer, as somebody who likes to take interesting photos, if it wasn't for any of that, I don't think I would have had the success that I've had on the internet. And the internet has been very kind in terms of, you know, you look at anything in Tumblr or Pinterest or you just Google anything, my stuff has gone viral. But these are things that go back 10 years. And any of this performance art that I've ever done, you know, I can send you stuff where I can post stuff to my website if people want to check it out. I've done my fair share of TV interviews, you know, from Ripley's Believe It or Not, to the Learning Channel, to talk shows like Ricky Like, I've done stuff in Germany, Japan, wherever Australia. They always want to put the emphasis on the freak factor, like drum around, which body modification guy, forehead, blah, blah, blah, but I always insist on whatever contract I can have. I'm like, can you guys just say somewhere, photographer and body artists or body artists and photographer? Because this is genuinely awesome. I think that these are interesting things to discuss. I personally don't care about being on TV. I'm not the kind of person, I'm a very low profile. I like to be discreet. I like the fact that I can go to the grocery store and people don't know who I am. I like that. But the fact is media has always been like, hey, look at this guy. And even though I'm not into that, it's to my interest to be like, hey, you guys want to talk about that, can you just post a link to my website, same photographer? And if that gives me, you know, a wide stream, mainstream audience, if I'm on TV and it says drum around, it's chapter nine photography, I always looked at that as, you know, any publicity is good publicity, but you're compromising to a certain degree. So yeah, that's been a difficult choice that I am who I am. I don't hide any of that. I'm proud of the things that I've done and they entirely make me who I am. But how the media plays with it, they've always wanted to put the emphasis on drum. The guy with the forehead who did this or that, I'm like, who wants to talk about the photos? Who wants to take a deeper look at the people in my photos? This is the other thing. When I talk about that 33%, I'll take a 33%, you know, what I bring to the direction. I look at myself like a director with actors. I look at myself as being one third of that puzzle and the people that I shoot are the other third because if I was just a product photographer taking photos of lipstick for La Hayao or taking photos of boots for a boot manufacturer, then I would need to be totally awesome technically and I'd be I'm the most awesome technician and those are the best boot photos you've ever seen and that's me. But I can't say that for my work because I'm just the guy who chooses when I go click and what people give to me and what they give me is trust in that moment that I go click is really the biggest piece of my puzzle for me. If I break it down to a triangle of 33%, I still give the greatest credit to the people in my photos because they are real. They are what, you know, they are the people who allow me to do the work that I do because I just want to tell their stories more than my own and I think that's an interesting thing is where do you draw the line between putting the focus on me and my path and what I'm doing first is giving, you know, me wanting to put them in the forefront. So yeah, those are interesting things that I've had to explore in terms of what my path that, you know, I've kind of gone thrown left, right and center juggling all kinds of different concepts and my intent has always been to bring it back to, you know, the main narrative of my work and it's difficult because when you get, you know, media attention, you go with it but you can't always control how it goes. Wow, fascinating stuff and I'm really glad we got into this actually, you know, the part of it that interests me, believe it or not, more than anything is the mind over matter piece. I mean, burning your body, you know, cutting off fingers. I really want to, because to me that's actually a really powerful skill set, you know, mind over matter to me is one of those things that honestly is an essential skill to navigating the world of uncertainty that we live in today. Yes. And you know what? It's two things. It's mind over matter. It is believing in yourself and having the awareness. Now, I think when I say believing in yourself and having awareness is understanding that we are all different. We all have our own magic, you know, and that as well for me as a person and as an artist, I think everybody's interested in if you really have a chance to dig into who they are. So that makes it fun for me. I just like to meet people and see what I can find of them. But, you know, explaining football to the friend who's just there for the nachos, hard tailgating from home like a pro with snacks and drinks everyone will love, any easy win. 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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance, fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations. Forging ahead together drives Colorado's pioneering spirit at Chevron, we donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the community's we call home. We also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer. All to help improve lives in our shared backyard. That's Energy in Progress. Visit Colorado dot chevron.com. Every idea starts with a problem. Warby Parker's was simple. Glasses are too expensive, so they set out to change that. By designing glasses in-house and selling directly to customers, they're able to offer prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Warby Parker glasses are made from premium materials like impact resistant polycarbonate and custom acetate, and they start at just $95, including prescription lenses. Get glasses made from the good stuff. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you. So when you take self-awareness with Mind Over Matter, I think that my personal explorations just to generalize have always been dealing with obstacles, any obstacle in life. You hit a wall and I think that we have all hit walls, no matter what, I perhaps as an artist or as a non-business man has hit different walls. But we all have those walls in our life and I think I'll take this tangent to say, yeah, I can talk about all this Aboriginal stuff, but I can also get into any other modern psychology of getting things done or taking an initiative or being an entrepreneur. I have mixed all that in terms of when you hit a wall, you got to pick yourself up and you got to keep moving. And I think that's what differentiates all kinds of people. Some people will hit a wall and they'll stay stumped and not know what to do with. And I don't know any more what to do with that wall. But I know that what makes the difference between me obtaining my goals, and this is only about me obtaining my goals, is about picking myself up and moving forward. An interesting thing, let's go back to the finger, as I haven't talked about this in a while, maybe we can get back into this. I did my research in terms of various Aboriginal things and stretching my neck with rings was not what I was going to do and blah, blah, blah, I can be silly about this. But there is something about amputation that I identified with. Because as a scientist, this is not about subtraction, it is about transformation. Nothing in life, atomically or otherwise, is ever created or destroyed, it is only transformed. And this is where it's fun for me to be an artist and to be a scientist. And that was for me, and you know, I talk about Aboriginal stuff, but I haven't even gotten into the cybernetics. Luke Skywalker gets his arm cut off, gets a robot arm instead. That was a generation or two generations ago. And now if you literally Google Luke Skywalker arm, there is, you know, a robotics company in the US who got like 40 million or something to develop this very cool robotic arm. Part of this whole thing was not only for me to go how far, and very, very important that I mentioned, I had never taken drugs up until that point. And I was not interested in alcohol, so I guess you can call what I was, was straight edge. But I just didn't have any interest in altering my body or my mind with exterior substances. I was more interested in doing it internally. And I say that in terms of meditating and lying on a bed of nails and all that. And there's all these, you know, reasons why people cut off fingertips in Aboriginal cultures. And one of them that related to my mindset was the concept of grief. In Indonesia, if I'm not mistaken, women in a tribe, each time a family member dies, they chop off a digit and that person gets buried with the digit. And if the king or, you know, the king of the tribe dies and everybody cuts off a finger and they get buried with a pile of fingertips. So fascinating stuff. But there was a concept of that, of grief, but also for me to explore, this is not subtraction, this is transformation because, you know, this is me using my sense of humor, but also being very scientific about it. I wear glasses. And without my glasses, I see nothing on nearsighted. So in the near future, I'd love to get laser eye surgery and figure about $4,000 for that, right? If I had a couple million dollars, like Dr. Evil, and I could get my eyeballs removed and put cameras instead, get night vision, heat sensor, zoom lens, well, why be human if you can be more than human? You know, you look at the exoskeleton suits in Avatar, you know, you just get in this robot and it's putting on like a pair of pants and a coat and you've got this robot suit now. Well, that's going to happen in our timeline, you know? We're not going to have flying cars or who knows what's going to happen with that, but exoskeleton suits will happen over my timeline. And I just say that in a sense that I'm curious and I can run, I can jump, I can do all kinds of stuff now, but when I'm 70 or 80, will I be able to run and jump the same way I can now? Logically not, but hopefully, if technology keeps going the way it does, if I just look at my cell phone versus the computer I bought for $5,000 a couple years ago, maybe I can get a $5,000 right, so skeleton suits by the time I'm 70. So that ties into part of the reason why I wanted to fight. Anyways, all that to say, I wanted to see if I could cut off my own finger. One night, my friend Pierre calls me up and he's like, "Hey, Jerome, do you want to go see a movie?" I'm like, "No, cutting off my finger tonight. How about tomorrow?" He's like, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah, what are you going to go see? Like maybe we can catch that tomorrow night instead." He's like, "Dude, what the fuck are you really going to cut off your finger?" I'm like, "Hey, I got everything ready." So he's like, "Well, aren't you going to bleed to death?" I'm like, "No, people don't usually, so should be fine." And he's like, "Well, call me back after it's just make sure you're not dead." So I'm like, "All right, cool. Enjoy your movie." And this is me casually. Pierre knew that it was going to cut off my finger, but I'm like, "Yeah, tonight, I'm going to do it." And again, no drugs, no alcohol, and all this to say about the unexpected. I'm right-handed and I cut off the last digit of my right-hand pinky. The reason being I still play a guitar, and even if I'm right-handed, it's my left-hand that's on the guitar neck. So I wanted to keep all those fingers. I'm not a flamenco player, so I didn't really need that last one. I did my research, you know, it's like your thumb's worth 40% of your hand. Your index is 20, your middle finger is 20, the others are 10. So by taking off 1/3 of that 10%, I lost 3% of my dexterity. Seriously, the only thing I've lost is the ability to reach to the letter P on my keyboard and the enter. I didn't see that. I pretty much projected everything else, and it's fine for biking, weightlifting, whatever. But all that to say, I'm right-handed, therefore I set up a system where I kind of had a guillotine with a kitchen knife, and I put my finger under it, and got all the other fingers out of the way. But the only way to cut off my right-hand finger was to lift something heavy with my left hand and smash it on a knife and try to like leverage it, right? I'm not left-handed, so I practiced smashing this big heavy metal brick thing just on a phone book. I'm like, all right, I think I got the mechanics of my left arm, I am now ready. So it's not even mind-over-matter, I'm like, I'm not left-handed, this is awkward. So I'm struggling with not being a left-handed person versus I'm going to cut off my finger. That being said, I'm not a spiritual person, I believe in spirituality more than religion, but I do believe in energy, I don't understand it, I'm curious, but I don't understand it. That being said, anything that I always do, I only do it if I'm really convinced it's a good idea. And I kind of brought myself to being in a trance just by breathing deeply, and I sent a question out to the universe, and I asked the universe, I'm like, is this the right thing to do? Am I making mistakes? Should I do this? Yes or no? And the answer came back, it was really weird. The answer came back? Yeah, sure, go ahead. So I was like, oh, cool, I got an answer, it was positive. There was like, no doubt, cool, go. So I lift up my left hand, I smash down this big thing on a knife, and I'm like, ah, cut off my finger, I actually did it, lift the knife, and my body's in shock, but my mind's not, right? So my body's kind of panicking, but my mind's not, I lift the knife, I look at it. I only kind of got like 80% through the bone, they're still tendon on the underside. So my lesson being, I had prepared everything to cut off my finger, I just didn't expect that I had to do it twice. So here I am in shock, but fascinated, and looking at my finger and it's dangling, I'm like, oh geez, I didn't do a great job, I've never done this before, I should finish it. So I had to line everything up, put it back under the knife, and the second time it was easily, boom, bang, so it's done. And so my fingertip is floating a few centimeters away from my actual finger, and my brain is looking at it, and I swear, my brain is looking at it, I'm like, move, come on, you can do it, move, just a little bit, you know, like what you see with people who are like supposedly handicapped, spinal injury, can't move their toes, and I move your toes, if you can move your toes, then you're okay, right? And I'm like, I wanted a remote controlled finger, yeah, until anybody proved that you couldn't do it, I was just, and that wasn't the whole point, but at that point I was curious, so I was experimenting with that. But it was a really interesting thing that my body went into shock, and it was trying to send signals, there was phantom pain, there were things that I didn't understand, but my conscious mind throughout the entire thing was like, hey, cool, you did it, you wanted to see if you could do it, you can do it, so just wrap things up and all that. And it was as much artistic in terms of the photos that I wanted to take and statement, and I'd say it was a personal exploration beyond anything, but for sure the photo has value, and for me as an individual, just say casually, even now, more than 15 years later with a sense of humor, I'm like, yeah, I cut off my finger, I was curious. But the cool thing is, to get into something very intellectual, try to describe red to somebody who was born blind, you can't. If we talk about love, or God, I can talk about love, you can talk about love, I can talk about God, you can talk about God, but there are very abstract concepts and there is no way scientifically to prove that I believe in God, or that I actually love something, you just got to believe it. And this is the interesting thing as quote-unquote, a scientist, but a very tribal caveman, whatever. I go back and forth between the curiosity of what does any of this mean, you know, and I'd like to think that I've never been afraid of my own mortality. I'm like, oh, I went all by and people will be sad, you know, I'm more afraid of injury, you know, like knee ligament damage, not being able to walk, and you know, it's like, let's just do something else. Even as a visual artist, I'm like, if I lose my eyes, I'll make music, I'll sing, you know. So that is an interesting thing. It has also allowed me to see that anything can happen, and no matter what happens, I'll just do something else, and that was part of it. But again, to draw the tangent, we can Google who the name is, she was on Ellen, but there was a woman who was born deaf, and she got a hearing implant. And it went viral on the internet, and basically they flick on the switch, and she starts crying because she can hear herself. And there's this whole thing about that. And that is key to what I've explored, is we think we know what we know about our five senses, but I've always been curious that there's got to be more. I don't know what it is. There's energy, people feel things, people see things, our brains allow us to tap into things that we don't yet master. But my whole point is what if someday, and this is going back to the Luke Skywalker thing, but if we have USB wings, you just have a USB port or a memory thing like Johnny Mnemonic and you plug in an SD card and you've got 180 gigs of memory, you download the martial arts program. But again, just to get back into the reality, this woman was born deaf. She gets a hearing aid on one side, so unidirectional, and later on she was invited to the Ellen General Show, and Ellen hooked her up with the other implant. And what the story is after that, this woman learned to hear. So she's walking down the street, and she hears an ambulance, she's like, "Oh, there's an ambulance." But because she has no sense of perception, she does not know where this ambulance is coming from, where you and I might be able to be our gods coming to the west. It's coming this way. So even within the five senses that we have, this woman can now hear, but she needs to develop perception in the same way people were born blind, and now we are replacing eyeballs retinas with cameras that we can just again connect them to whatever nerves in the brain and all that scientific stuff that I don't master. I'm more of a conceptual philosopher, even though I've practiced certain things. But you can literally get somebody who is born blind, hook them up with this technology and make them navigate a maze. They won't walk into a wall if they'll navigate the maze. So imagine to the point where these same people would benefit of an HD camera, where they have full color spectrum, where they could have night vision and heat sensors more than we could because, well, hey, might as well give it to them. So those are the things that have always fascinated me. And that was one very small part of cutting off the finger was I understand the reverse engineering of that phantom pain. And if you look at Robocop, let's say, that happened to have re-seen something go by, Robocop was just a brain, a face, some lungs and a hand. But the whole point is you are still you. And that has been a big part of my explorations is when do we stop being ourselves? You know, if my grandfather has a pacemaker, he's still my grandfather. He's got, you know, circuitry helping his heartbeat. And as we replace those parts, if I replace my arm and I get an exoskeleton, am I still Jerome and how long will I still be Jerome? And those are things where I'm like, forget the photography because, you know, everybody's a photographer now. Maybe I'll be generating holograms like in minority report for years from now professionally. So I don't know where I'll go professionally or artistically, but I do know that there are fascinating things that will happen in our lifetime that I will always be curious about whether it falls into my professional or personal, you know, timeline. You know, the very beginning of our conversation, we had this talk about sort of our identities as the artist versus the person, right? Like separating sort of the person versus the persona. And is it something that, you know, I've been thinking a lot about lately as our brand has evolved and as, you know, one of the experiences I had was that I was at an event and people knew about the unmistakable creative, but they didn't know my name, which I was actually very happy about. Because that means that the brand has evolved beyond me, but this is actually a very important subject. I mean, it's sort of, you know, distinguishing between those two things and really, I think that to some degree we do have to distinguish between those things, but also still showing up in the world authentically and, you know, like choosing our moments of being vulnerable. I mean, I'd love to hear your insight on all of this given everything that you've been through. Yeah, totally. And on many regards, I've had interesting personal adventures that have brought me up and down in life. I've had interesting professional adventures that have brought me up and down in life. And we're always trying to adapt to what that is. And it's, you know, I think, have you heard the Neil Gaiman address that he did maybe like a year and a half ago? I think so, yes. Okay. Anyways, he said something in there about, you know, just whatever your mountain is and going for it, and also whatever hardships that we are, you know, your cat explodes and dies, make good art. But there's something to be said about that. And in my path, what has been difficult is I've had setbacks that completely prevented me from making my art because I had realities, whether they be financial or otherwise to deal with. And that's just not the time to be like, yeah, I'm going to make art. But whatever it is that you feel at that moment, that does not go away. And anything that I've experienced in life, those are all recorded in, you know, whatever element of my cortex that the next time that I have the opportunity to make art, which is actually at this point in my life, that I've dealt with a few of the business setbacks or financial issues or whatever, where I have the ability to pursue my art, I'm able to take that raw power and put it into there. And there's different aspects to it, you know, for me to say in an interview, I've had setbacks and therefore I wasn't creating art and now I've overcome them and I am creating art. But God, it's going to be visceral. It is going to be visceral because I have the ability to do one ident before. And I think another thing is, you know, if we look at, you know, what you're addressing in your overall thing about the instigator, it's been an interesting thing for me that I've never deliberately set out to shock anybody, no more with cutting off my finger than inflating my forehead than any of the photos that I took. But I'm just being myself and myself and the things that I do and the people that I surround myself with could be shocking for certain people and are definitely shocking for the mainstream. And you know, again, if I look at, you know, I'll use, let's say the Matrix as an example, the movie that came out in 1999, when that came out and you saw, you know, let's say Trinity wearing the latex suit, that was pretty badass. Now, if you see, let's say Rihanna wearing a latex suit, been there, done that, you know, so certain things have different impacts at different time. And I think that a lot of the things that I covered either in my work and my own explorations were unseen or unknown to larger audiences and the Internet exploding the way it did exposed that to people. So it's always a question that I've just done what I've done knowing that, you know, and again, like, you know, what I said about the sex fiends not enjoying the bike work in my portfolio. That was very strange. But it's also a question that I know that maybe some of the straight people might not like seeing the gay themed work that I do. But then it's hypocritical because how many quote unquote straight people have fantasies of lesbians of two women together, but as soon as you show two men together, it makes them feel very uncomfortable. In that regards, yeah, I'm going to mess with my quote unquote straight audience. If you like seeing sexy women in my portfolio, you're not going to be able to do so without maybe seeing some men together. And maybe that'll make you reflect on maybe this is all the same, we all have desires. So in that sense, maybe I love to provoke people in certain ways. But I think people end up provoking themselves with stuff. And I think that's been a card that I've played. I'm like, I'll let people react to my stuff, even though it may or may not strike that chord with them. Well, drum, this has been just absolutely fascinating. Definitely. Now, I know why Julie, when I asked Julie and I said, I need you to find me somebody who's got a really, really crazy story. That's unusual. And now I'm really understanding, you know, why he sent you my way. So I want to wrap things up with one sort of final question that we close all our interviews with. And you clearly, I think in numerous ways really embody this based on the art that you've chosen to create and the way you show up in the world. What is it that you think makes somebody or something unmistakable? The authenticity of it. See, that's the question that I've had to answer. Thank you. I think that, you know, at the biggest compliment that I could give myself that I've never expected and I think I'll touch base on a few things, I didn't like my name growing up. And it doesn't sound very Hollywood, if I can say. And we all know that artists come up with artist names or DJ, whoever, right? And in the metal scene, people always had cool names and as a metal guy, I was like, I'm going to come up with, you know, the artists formerly known as Prince. And I think I went back and forth for years, even as a musician as, or when I started photography, I wasn't comfortable with my own name because I was fearful that my potential employers would find out what I was doing on my own time, you know? And it got to a point where I realized, hey, you know what, I'm Jerome Abramovich. That's who I am. And I'm different from everybody else. And in this day right now, if somebody says Jerome Abramovich, whatever that means, whether it means my finger, my forehead, the art or the people that I surround myself, it can mean all of that. But I think no matter what people say, it's applicable, it's usually fair. I'm usually quite proud of who I am and what I've done. And I think that anybody that I look up to professionally or artistically has been that is they have been themselves, you know, for what I know of you, you argue and you do what you do. And that's why it's interested in the same way that Julian does what he does. And I think that that's what makes anybody unmistakable, is just being themselves and following that voice, no matter what. And I think this also, you know, this touches into the entrepreneurial stuff because I've, you know, not been trained as a businessman and I've had to train myself as a businessman to succeed, you know, is that in any business, there are crazy setbacks. And the only difference between the people that are successful and not successful is the successful people crash and burn just as much as everybody else and it sucks for all of us equally, but it's those that pick themselves up and keep believing in it and that keep have that fire and passion no matter what. And I think for me, with the life that I've had, the only thing that has been clear for me is I need to create, you know, I might be an architect someday. I'm fascinated by furniture. I want to design lamps and tables. I don't have the qualifications right now, but hey, give me a saw and some stuff and I'll see what I can do. But I just have a burning desire to create and I think that in anybody as long as that desire is still there and that also touches to the remaining youthful, you know, I've been surrounded by people that are 20, 30, 50, 80, they don't have an age. They might have a physical age, but all the people that surround me, they all have that same fire and you can't put an age to that. If anything, I'd say I think all those people are childish and have a sense of humor on top of that. So I think that's all very important to being unmistakable. Amazing. Well, Jerome, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share some of your insights with our listeners here at the Unmistakable Creative. This has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you. And you know, I think that, you know, for me, again, to put things in perspective that I'm a visual artist, my guy that likes to make sounds, you know, I'm more comfortable making noises than I am trying to assemble words and that was extremely awkward. But see, I took a rest, it wasn't a very good one for me to say I've got an interest in metal. That was pathetic. Sorry, I'm a little bit rusty. Well, I think that makes a perfect way to sum up our conversation. 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An early interest in tribal/aboriginal cultures
Finding what speaks to us and reconnecting with it
How we become cultural byproducts of our environment
Staying true to yourself as an artist through a career
Why self awareness is essential to everything in one’s life
Separating the artist persona from the artist as a person
Balancing artistic production and professional goals
The 33% of magic that happens in any artistic project
How a background as a musician influenced Jerome’s photography
Jerome’s body modification experiments
Getting in the Guinness book of world records for the largest forehead inflation
The experience of cutting off his own finger

Jerome Abramovitch is a Montreal-based photographer.

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