People and Blogs: Taylor Troesh

April 9, 2024

Every so often I come across an interview where they share some profound insight into themselves. This is the reasons why people read or listen to interviews. Our innate curiosity leads to seek out these nuggets of information. Unless you are really paying close attention, it can be easy to miss.

Writer and longtime friend. Author of On Photography and the introduction to Portraits in Life and Death. Sontag was a highly photogenic woman and Hujar made several of the most famous photographs of her, including this one. He was stung with bitterness when he was not so much as mentioned in On Photography, though his resentment was salved by Sontag’s brilliant introduction to Portraits in Life and Death, the one book of photographs he published during his lifetime. Hujar’s relationship with Sontag was complex.

This text I presume was written by Vince Aletti in the 2016 book Lost Downtown. I see how Hujar felt slighted by not being mentioned in On Photography. Then of course she wrote the introduction to Portraits in Life and Death. It is mentioned Hujar made several photographs of Sontag, but if you search peter hujar susan sontag, you are only likely to run into the photograph used as the cover of Lost Downtown. Thus one tangent to dig around for. Then the second is how he characterized their relationship as “complex”. How so? In what way? Answering that question may prove more difficult, as it is not always covered in such depth.

Jumping forward in the age of the internet people are much more open. The invention of the blog means one can publish their thoughts at a steady pace and we as readers can see the evolution of a writer and their thoughts. I’m not sure how I stumbled upon Taylor Troesh (likely Hacker News), but he to an interview he did for Manuel Moreale and at once the insight revealed itself.

But I didn’t start writing seriously until I stopped drinking in 2022. Writing was welcome respite from alcohol withdrawals. Without booze to fill my emptiness, I suddenly found myself with plenty of “boring” hours. So I kept writing. And now I can’t stop writing.

Quitting drinking doesn’t make you boring, but you have to replace the empty hours you spent drinking with something, otherwise boredom is inevitable. He also mentions how he sustains his blog with a enormous ‘ideas’ text file. This ‘behind the scenes’ perspective is what draws in the readers’ interest.