In 2013, a somewhat disillusioned photographer went on a trip to Ethiopia. Thankfully, for lovers of good photography everywhere, she took her camera with her.
Mihaela Noroc was born in Romania and, at age 16, was given an old film camera by her painter father. She learned how to develop and print her photographs and enrolled in a photography course at college. However, this was at the time when digital photography was coming into its own and everybody was into smartphones and Instagram and Tumbler and Twitter and Facebook. Mihaela says that she saw herself as, “just another average photographer surrounded by millions of others.”
Her trip to Ethiopia inspired her to embark on a work of passion. She wanted to show the inherent beauty of women, their strength and dignity that transcended race, social status, wealth and all of the trappings that many of us fall on to define us. Above all, she wanted to show the beauty in diversity.
She has travelled to more than fifty countries and taken photographs of women of all ages and all ethnicities. Perhaps ironically, the very things that once caused her to give up photography are the same things that helped her to achieve her objective. She turned to the digital format and used social media to show the world her work.
