James E. Talkington
Photographs ©1996 Malcolm J. Wilson
At nineteen, Jim Talkington left his central West Virginia hometown of Buckhannon to make himself into a photographer. That was 1983. He learned the business by working as an assistant in one Cincinnati studio after another; at the same time he was working the off-road motorcycle racing circuit, becoming one of the top shooters of dirt bike competition in the country.
"Cincinnati's my home. It is now, but it wasn't always and it won't always be. But for right now, everything's here that I want. At some point, I want to go back. There's a certain spot on the Buckhannon River, a rock I want to stand on again. Someday I'll end up back in West Virginia, if not all the time, I'd love to have a place there that I could go to. We'll see if the yuppies discover it, if I can still afford land there."
Perceptions of Home: The Urban Appalachian Spirit ©1996 The Urban Appalachian Council (now Urban Appalachian Community Coalition)
Photographs ©1996 Malcolm J. Wilson; Interviews ©1996 Don Corathers
Photographs digitized by the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library. Genealogy & Local History Department.