Torment Magazine issue 7 with Jon Stark

What is your name and role with Torment Magazine?

My name is Jon Stark, I'm the co-owner of Torment Magazine and when it comes to the magazine I'm the content director.

What does the name Torment mean?

I have always liked that people have their own impressions of it, but we have stated it in the first editor's note, and in this editor's note, that it’s this ode to the kind of suffering we put ourselves through for things that we love to do. Filming snowboarding is a pretty difficult thing, and it puts you through trials and tribulations mentally and physically. I think that I dug the word torment out of those experiences.

Biggest challenge with issue 7?

It starts with are we going to even do this or not. We have to make that decision immediately after issue 6. Then we force ourselves to be like, if we are going to do this again it needs to evolve. Everything from the economics of it to what it actually is, and what came from that was printing the book overseas was much cheaper to print and that makes it more appealing to us instead of paying a pretty insane premium domestically that we have been doing since issue 1. Then really leaning into this idea that we have been making this photo book for 6 years now and we really just need to just go full in and pull back and just do what we did with the first issue and showcase photos and give them the space. That creates something so dense and this is what issue 7 stands differently than the others, it’s front to back photos. Producing a hardcover overseas was kind of easy. Doing hardcover here in the United States is really expensive, and sort of hard to figure out.

Biggest surprise with issue 7?

Ever since like issue 3 or 4 we have been so reliant on Oli Gagnon photos.

Even though the cover was shot by him this year, there are only maybe 4 or 5 photos

that he shot in the entire magazine. In issue 4,5,6, it’s 30%-40% Oli photos.

We were freaked out at first that we weren’t going to have enough photos to fill out the magic number of 228 pages.

We as humans are scared of uncertainty but it all worked out, there was an abundance of photos this year.

Percentage of digital vs film imagery?

This is speculative but, I would say it’s like 60%/40% digital to film. The cover is film.

Favorite page in issue 7?

The big snow photo in the beginning. It was hard to figure out what this year's theme was going to be

and I think that photo kind of unlocked the door for us to understand how we were going to start it.

And in most years we start with snowboard action off the bat. And this year we created that space between

the cover and your photo with some blank pages. We get to the image from big snow and it unlocks this lifestyle

chain and then gets into the density of it all. 

MVP of issue 7?

Ian Boll, Ian is the editor in chief and the amount of responsibility that he has to take on and the amount of communication, it is astronomical. It is a process that really pushes the limits of everything creatively, business wise, organization, and just the commitment till the end. You finish 90% of it and you got 10% left and the last 10% ends up being as much effort as the first 90%. That’s Torment in a nutshell every year, the finishing process ends up being pretty intense.

Pick a song that describes the vibe of issue 7.

Radiohead “How To Disappear Completely” off Kid A.

If you could leave a Torment issue 7 on anyone’s coffee table in the world who would it be?

David Benedek.

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