Margot Vale, a quiet
kind of photographer.

I grew up on the North Carolina side of the Blue Ridge, in a house with one south-facing window and a mother who hoarded photo albums. By the time I was fifteen I had taken every family photograph for a decade. I studied printmaking at UNC Asheville, then spent four years assisting an editorial photographer in Brooklyn, mostly carrying lights and learning what a face looks like when someone finally relaxes. I moved back home in 2019 and opened Still Hours the following winter.

My work lives in the small space between portraiture and documentary. I photograph weddings without a shot list. I photograph editorial portraits without directing the sitter into poses. I photograph products and brands with the same care I would give a face. On any given day I am shooting on either a Hasselblad 501cm or a Leica SL2, sometimes both. I do my own darkroom work for personal projects.

I live in West Asheville with a bad tabby, a good garden, and too many books. I am most myself in the first hour of morning and the last hour of evening — which is, not coincidentally, when I do my best work.