Body
Mihaela Noroc is an entrepreneurial young Romanian photographer who has initiated an affecting project called The Atlas of Beauty. Her writing about the project is terse, but the premise is compelling: that ideas of beauty are surprisingly narrow, racialized and tinged with class and a variety of other biases. Her travels have taken her to 60 countries where she has catalogued the incredible diversity of our species with direct frontal portraits of women. The site is organized in a way that does not take you directly to the countries where she has worked, but a recent piece at The Guardian helps out by showcasing some of the 30 portraits she took on the North Korean leg of her travels. In general, the project speaks for itself but there is an additional interest: both evidence for the penetration of outside fashion and continuity in distinctive North Korean style as well.
