Atlas of Beauty: Mihaela Noroc's Portraits of Women Worldwide

The Atlas of Beauty is a long-running portrait project by Romanian photographer Mihaela Noroc, who set out with a backpack and a camera to photograph ordinary women in the places where they live and work. Instead of models and studios, she looked for market sellers, students, nurses-in-training, police officers, refugees and grandmothers, and asked each one a little about her life.

The idea behind it is simple: there is no single face of beauty. Age, skin colour, clothing, faith and income change from street to street, and the project treats all of them as part of the same human picture. Noroc usually shoots in natural light, close to the person, with their own surroundings in the background, so a fruit stall, a refugee tent or a city station becomes part of the portrait.

The series grew into a book of more than 500 portraits from dozens of countries, and she continues to share new pictures and short stories on her Facebook page and on Instagram. Below are thirty of her photographs, grouped by region, with a note on where each was taken and what makes the place or the woman worth knowing about. All photographs are by Mihaela Noroc.

Nepal, India and the Tibetan Plateau

#1 Kathmandu, Nepal

Sona was photographed during Holi, the Hindu spring festival in which people throw coloured powder and water at friends and strangers alike. The streaks of pink on her face are the festival's mark. In Nepal, Holi is a public holiday and the streets of Kathmandu fill with colour for the day.

#8 Kathmandu, Nepal

Noroc met this woman walking with her son. She spoke no English, so the photographer explained through him why she wanted the picture. When she said it was because his mother was beautiful, he agreed with obvious pride: "Yes, she is." The red shawl and bindi are everyday dress for many Nepali Hindu women.

#9 Pokhara, Nepal

This portrait was taken on a Sunday in 2015 on Phewa Lake, where families from Pokhara spend their weekends rowing the brightly painted wooden boats. The lake sits below the Annapurna range and is one of Nepal's best-known places to unwind. Her red dress against the yellow boat shows how much Noroc relies on natural colour rather than staging.

#26 Kathmandu, Nepal

A young mother carries her child on her back in a narrow Kathmandu lane, the way many Nepali parents do. Noroc used this picture to share her own conclusion after years on the road: that she had met far more kindness than hate, even as the wider world seemed to grow less tolerant of difference.

#18 Pushkar, India

A uniformed police officer stands on the steps of Pushkar, a holy town in Rajasthan known for its lake and ghats. Noroc noted that, from country to country, she kept seeing women in police and public service roles. In India, the share of women in the police has been rising slowly from a low base, so a portrait like this still stands out.

#22 Tibetan Plateau

This mother of two opened her door in a rural village while in the middle of cleaning her house, and was still wearing her jewellery. Coral, turquoise and silver are traditional Tibetan adornments that often carry family value. The flushed cheeks are common at high altitude, where sun and wind are strong.

From the Caucasus to Mongolia and Myanmar

#3 Baku, Azerbaijan

Fidan, pictured by the Caspian Sea, belongs to a growing group of Azerbaijani women pushing for equal treatment at home and at work. Noroc wrote that many women there still hesitate to be photographed without a husband's permission, which makes a confident portrait like this one a small statement in itself. Fidan told her she would only accept a relationship built on equal respect.

#4 Tehran, Iran

Mahsa is a graphic designer in Tehran who has supported herself since she turned eighteen. Her headscarf reflects Iran's compulsory hijab law, which has applied in public since the early 1980s. Behind the dark fabric is a quiet story about financial independence, a theme that comes up again and again in the project.

#6 Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan

Noroc found this woman working in a field in the Wakhan Corridor, a high, narrow strip of Afghanistan about 350 km long that runs between Tajikistan, Pakistan and China. Only a few thousand Wakhi and Kyrgyz families live there, at altitudes of around 3,000 metres and above. Her embroidered red clothing is typical of the region's Wakhi women.

#24 Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

She is wearing a deel, the long wrap-over robe that fastens on the right side and is tied with a sash. Herders still wear it every day, while people in the capital tend to keep it for festivals such as Tsagaan Sar, the lunar new year. Noroc photographed her against the hillside houses on the edge of Ulaanbaatar.

#11 Nampan, Myanmar

This older woman was photographed at a local market holding fresh greens, beside the truck that brings produce in. Nampan lies on Inle Lake in Shan State, where much of daily trade happens in rotating village markets. Her warm smile and wrapped headscarf make it one of the gentlest pictures in the series.

Ethiopia

#2 Ethiopia

This young woman is Muslim, and her closest friend, who runs the small terrace café where the picture was taken, is Christian. Noroc travelled through Ethiopia in February and wrote about how often she saw friendships that crossed religious lines. Ethiopia has one of the oldest Christian churches in the world and a large Muslim population, and the two have lived side by side for centuries.

#15 Omo Valley, Ethiopia

She belongs to the Daasanach, a people of about 50,000 in Ethiopia who live near the delta of the Omo River and the northern tip of Lake Turkana, with smaller communities in Kenya. Once mainly cattle herders, many Daasanach now also farm sorghum, maize and beans on land the river floods each year. Layered bead necklaces like hers are a familiar part of women's dress in the area.

Latin America and the Caribbean

#5 Amazon Rainforest

Pictured on a tree branch above the water, this woman was wearing her wedding outfit, made from natural fibres. Noroc did not name the community, and the Amazon basin is home to hundreds of Indigenous peoples across nine countries. The portrait is one of the few in the series where the landscape fills almost the whole frame.

#7 Chichicastenango, Guatemala

Noroc photographed Maria, a vegetable seller at the market, as she laughed behind her hands. Chichicastenango, in the western highlands, is a K'iche' Maya town whose Thursday and Sunday market is one of the largest in Central America. It is also where the Popol Vuh, the K'iche' book of creation, was written down in the early 1700s.

#27 Chichicastenango, Guatemala

Noroc returned to the same town in January and met this woman carrying a load wrapped in striped cloth on her head, a common way to transport goods through the crowded market. Her embroidered blouse, the huipil, is woven in patterns that often identify a woman's home town. Noroc used the picture to speak about the heavy burdens many women carry, literally and otherwise, with patience and good humour.

#19 Havana, Cuba

Many people who see this portrait assume she is an actress or a model. In fact she told Noroc that her only goal was to finish her studies and work as a nurse. Cuba trains an unusually large number of doctors and nurses for its size, and healthcare is one of the most respected careers on the island.

Europe

#12 Bucharest, Romania

Magda was a passenger in a serious car accident in 2005 and has used a wheelchair since. Noroc, herself from Romania, pointed out that in many countries she visited, wheelchair users were almost absent from public places because pavements, transport and buildings shut them out. Magda works on initiatives to change how people with disabilities are treated in Romania.

#23 Timisoara, Romania

Alice was photographed on the day she celebrated her high-school graduation, mortarboard tassel still in place. Timisoara, in western Romania, is the city where the 1989 revolution against Ceaușescu began. Her generation grew up entirely in the European Union era.

#13 Reykjavik, Iceland

Thorunn runs a popular online community that connects Icelandic women. Iceland has topped the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap ranking for more than a decade, and women's networks have played a big part in that story. Noroc photographed her by the harbour in a fur-trimmed coat against the cold sea light.

#14 Korolyov, Russia

Nastya works in a small shop taking passport photos, while dreaming of photographing landscapes around the world. Korolyov, just outside Moscow, is the centre of the Russian space industry and is named after rocket designer Sergei Korolev. The sign behind her simply reads "photo".

#16 Lisbon, Portugal

Daniela was born in Lisbon and has Angolan roots. Angola was a Portuguese colony until 1975, and many families moved between the two countries in the decades around independence. Noroc enjoyed how many different backgrounds share the streets of the Portuguese capital.

#17 Berlin, Germany

Born to a mother from Mali and a father from France, Anais told Noroc she feels both African and European. Her yellow print dress stands out against the crowd behind her. Mixed identities like hers are now common in Europe's large cities, and the project gives them a calm, confident face.

#20 Zürich, Switzerland

Patricia and Rebecca are sisters born a year apart. As children they were teased for their red hair, and they said that this pushed them closer together. Noroc spotted them in Zürich's main railway station and asked for a portrait on the spot.

#21 Belgian With Polish Origins

Ania, who is Belgian with Polish roots, uses a running prosthesis and hopes to compete at the Paralympic Games. Carbon-fibre running blades like hers have opened elite sport to many amputee athletes since the 1990s. She sits on stone steps in sports gear, ready for training.

#28 Paris, France

Imane has African and European heritage and wants to open a gallery that shows artists from around the world. Noroc photographed her on a bridge with Paris rooftops behind her. Her ambition fits the city's long history as a magnet for artists from abroad.

#29 Milan, Italy

Caterina is a ballet dancer, and her mother, Barbara, is her strongest supporter. Milan is home to La Scala, whose ballet school is one of the oldest in Europe. The mother-and-daughter pairing is one of several portraits in the project that look at women across generations.

Women who fled war

#10 Idomeni Refugee Camp, Greece

This mother and her two daughters escaped the war in Syria. Idomeni, a village on Greece's border with North Macedonia, became an informal camp for more than 15,000 people in early 2016 after the route north was closed. Greek authorities began moving people out of the camp on 24 May 2016.

#30 Idomeni, Greece

Noroc met this mother of three at the same camp. She had fled her home town in Iraq while it was under the control of ISIS and spent all her savings on the long journey to Europe, hoping for safety for her children. The tents in the background show how makeshift the camp was.

#25 Syria

Hasa is a young Yazidi from Syria whom Noroc met in a refugee camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Six of her young cousins were killed when ISIS attacked her village. In August 2014 ISIS launched a campaign against the Yazidis around Sinjar, killing thousands and abducting thousands of women and girls; UN investigators have recognised it as genocide. Hasa told Noroc she felt lucky to be alive and able to study.

What the portraits add up to

Looked at together, these pictures make a quiet argument. The women are not posed to fit a trend; they are photographed as they are, in work clothes, school uniforms, festival colours and headscarves. Their stories are just as varied: financial independence in Tehran, disability rights in Bucharest, survival after genocide in northern Iraq.

That is what has made the project travel so widely online. It offers a picture of beauty that includes age, faith, poverty and hardship, and it gives each subject a name and a sentence of her own whenever possible. If you enjoy the series, the best way to support it is to follow the photographer directly and look for her book, which collects many more portraits and the stories behind them.

Sources: Photographs and captions by Mihaela Noroc, The Atlas of Beauty on Facebook and Instagram; background from Wikipedia: Wakhan Corridor, Daasanach people, Chichicastenango, Deel, Idomeni and Yazidi genocide.