A photographer travelled the world taking pictures to answer this question:

What does a beautiful woman look like?

When you picture beauty, do you think of full lips, flowing hair and blush-coloured cheeks? Or do personality traits spring to mind – integrity, passion, authenticity and pride?

The chances are your answer will be completely different to your best friend’s, your mother’s, your partner’s and your colleagues’.

A 29-year-old Romanian photographer, Mihaela Noroc,  quit her job to travel and take pictures of beautiful people – whatever that meant, wherever she went.

What followed was a two-year photographic journey, entitled ‘The Atlas of Beauty’. Spanning 37 countries from China to Peru, Georgia to Iran.

Noroc said, “Now I can say that beauty is everywhere, and it’s not a matter of cosmetics or sizes but more about being yourself”.

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Capturing the distinctiveness of human nature, Noroc photographed a collection of women in their natural surroundings. Some look as if they could be our sisters, while others appear as if they have been freed from the archives of Vogue. Others would sit comfortably in the pages of National Geographic.

In Noroc’s words, “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”.

Here are Noroc’s breathtaking photos.

'The Atlas of Beauty'.

Harlem, New York.

Omo Valley, Ethiopia.

Nasir al-Mulk, Iran.

Australia.

Riga, Latvia.

San Francisco.

Java Sea, Indonesia.

Tbillsi, Georgia.

Colca Valley, Peru.

New York, USA.

Tibetan Plateau, China.

Tibetan Plateau, China.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Oxford, United Kingdom.

Ethiopia.

Colombia.

Mawlamyine, Myanmar.

North of Romania.

Baltic Sea.

Bogota, Colombia.

Yangon, Myanmar.

Iran.

Maramures, Romania.

Havana, Cuba.

Maori Temple, New Zealand.

Kichwa woman in Amazonian rainforest.

Ecuador.

El Paico, Chile.