Romanian Photographer captures diverse beauty with ‘Atlas of Beauty’ Project

Romanian photographer Mihaela Noroc decided to travel the world to capture images of beauty in different countries and cultures for her ‘Atlas of Beauty Project’.

It was three years ago that the then-27-year-old photographer quit her job, picked up her camera began backpacking to countries across the globe on the savings she had accumulated in her working years.

The idea behind the project is that beauty cannot be defined by one country, race or ethnicity. Noroc spent her savings travelling to countries all around the world and hopes to raise funding through Paypal to continue her project.

“I love the variety of earth, the diversity of people and I try to go beyond their surface, to discover their sincere and authentic side, to photograph it,” Noroc wrote on her website.

She believes that “global trends make us look and behave the same, but we are all beautiful because we are different. In the end, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder is always somebody else.”

Noroc, who prefers to capture natural faces of people who don’t use much makeup around the world, says, “In my opinion, beauty means to keep alive your origins and your culture. To be natural, sincere, authentic, particular, not necessary fashion or skinny.”

Till date, Noroc has visited 60 countries, including India, North Korea, and Kyrgyzstan, and hopes to continue to work on her life-long project. Recently on her visit to India, she photographed Bollywood star, Sonam Kapoor.

Her next destination is Egypt.

You can follow her journey on her Facebook page.

Check out some of her portraits below.

(All photos included are by Mihaela Noroc, and can be found on her website.)