Based on the author''s online photography project, this stunning collection features portraits of 500 women from more than 50 countries, accompanied by revelatory captions that capture their personal stories. Since 2013 photographer Mihaela Noroc has traveled the world with her backpack and camera taking photos of everyday women to showcase the diversity of beauty all around us. <The Atlas of Beauty< is a collection of her photographs celebrating women from all corners of the world, revealing that beauty is everywhere, and that it comes in many different sizes and colors. Noroc''s colorful and moving portraits feature women in their local communities, ranging from the Amazon rainforest to London city streets, and from markets in India to parks in Harlem, visually juxtaposing the varied physical and social worlds these women inhabit. Packaged as a gift-worthy, hardcover book, <The Atlas of Beauty< presents a fresh perspective on the global lives of women today.

As heard on NPR's Weekend Edition and as seen in Elle, The Cut, Family Circle, Cosmopolitan, Conde Nast Traveler, Advocate, and many more.

"Powerful."
—Glamour 

"Luminous."
—Forbes

"Gorgeous."*
—**BUST 

Autorentext
MIHAELA NOROC lives in Bucharest, Romania, and has traveled to 55 countries in the last four years working on her ongoing photography project The Atlas of Beauty, which is documented on her blog (theatlasofbeauty.com) and on her enormously popular Instagram (@the.atlas.of.beauty) and Facebook (The Atlas of Beauty) pages. Mihaela’s work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes and she has appeared on CNN, the BBC, and Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday.

Zusammenfassung
Based on the author's online photography project, this stunning collection features portraits of 500 women from more than 50 countries, accompanied by revelatory captions that capture their personal stories.
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** Since 2013 photographer Mihaela Noroc has traveled the world with her backpack and camera taking photos of everyday women to showcase the diversity of beauty all around us. The Atlas of Beauty is a collection of her photographs celebrating women from all corners of the world, revealing that beauty is everywhere, and that it comes in many different sizes and colors. Noroc's colorful and moving portraits feature women in their local communities, ranging from the Amazon rainforest to London city streets, and from markets in India to parks in Harlem, visually juxtaposing the varied physical and social worlds these women inhabit. Packaged as a gift-worthy, hardcover book, The Atlas of Beauty presents a fresh perspective on the global lives of women today.

Leseprobe
WELCOME TO THE ATLAS OF BEAUTY

Thank you for embarking on this journey with me. I’m Mihaela Noroc, the one on the back of this motorcycle. This colorful journey will take you to more than 50 countries, through 500 portraits of wonderful women. Together, we will celebrate the diversity of this fascinating world, but first, let’s go back to where it all began.
 
I’ve spent most of my life in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, a place roughly equidistant from Western Europe, Asia, and Africa. The 1990s, when I was growing up, were difficult years in Eastern Europe, with a lot of unemployment and poverty. As a result, my family moved often. Almost every year I would be sent to a new school, have to get used to a new neighborhood and make new friends. Back then, I struggled each time I had to leave one group of friends for another, move from one flat to another, but years later I realized that this gave me the capacity to adapt in so many new environments.
 
My father is a painter so I spent my childhood surrounded by his paintings, enjoying the diversity of colors. When I was 16, he gave me an old, secondhand film camera. I was too shy to go on the streets and take photos of strangers, so my first subjects were my mother and my sister. That’s how I started to photograph women, in a natural and very low-key way. At night, when my family was sleeping, the bathroom was mine and I would transform it into a darkroom to print my photos.
 
I went to college to study photography, but received little encouragement from my professors. These were the years of the digital boom, when everybody started buying cameras and I saw myself as just another average photographer surrounded by millions of others. I felt that the world didn’t need another mediocre artist, so I quit photography. I took work in other fields for money and a practical future, without really enjoying what I was doing.
 
For years I felt that I was in the wrong place, but didn’t have the power to escape. Then in 2013 a trip to Ethiopia changed my perspective. I brought along my camera, just like any other tourist.
 
Right away, I was fascinated by the women I saw during that vacation. Some were living in tribes, just as nonchalant about nudity as their ancestors had been generations before. Others were part of conservative communities, covering their heads. And still others, in the big cities, were embracing modern life.
 
Most of them were struggling and working hard, sometimes facing discrimination as women. But in these harsh environments, they were shining like stars—with dignity, strength, and beauty.
 
If there’s so much beauty and diversity in one country, what about the rest of the world? I wondered. I realized that the wonderful women of our planet need much more attention, and that true beauty is more than what we so often see in the media. In that moment, I started to dream again, and found the strength to break from my comfort zone, quit my job, and go back to photography. I started to travel, take photos and, little by little, I regained my self-confidence.
 
In the beginning, The Atlas of Beauty was just a small, personal project, funded with my savings, known only within my own country. I traveled on a very low budget, as a backpacker, mingling with the locals and trying to understand their cultures. After a while, the project took off on social media, something I had never imagined would happen. Millions of people were looking at my photos, and my email inbox filled up with messages from around the world. Sometimes people even recognized me on the street.
Some thanked me, saying that I changed their way of looking at women. I was particularly
happy that not just women, but also men, were interested in my work.
 
I now had a mandate: I would have to work harder, capture more diversity, and find more inspiring stories in order to send a message that really would be heard. People from all over began to donate to the project, allowing me to continue my work independently.
 
Traveling to so many fascinating places has given me some of the best times of my life, but also the most challenging. I’ve been close to war zones and wandered through dangerous slums. I’ve been freezing, overheated, emotional. I’ve been out of money, and I’ve been ill while far from the comforts of home. But meeting so many incredible women kept me moving forward on my path with enthusiasm.
 
I’ve been refused by hundreds of women whose portraits I had hoped to take, and I saw how discrimination and societal pressure weigh on the shoulders of so many. Some were simply scared to be photographed, even if they might have loved it. Others were not confident enough. But I’m very grateful to all the women I met, whether they said yes or no to my proposal. Sometimes we spent a few seconds together, other times hours, but from each of them I learned something.
 
I owe everything I am today to these…