Noa Avishag Schnall is a Los Angeles-born visual storyteller based in Paris, of Yemeni descent. Her work spans multiple continents with a focus on amplifying stories of justice, resistance, and cultural celebration in collaboration with underrepresented communities.
In 2014 Noa debuted a solo exhibition featuring her photographs and video from her first journey to Yemen. The following year, she pursued a Master’s in Indigenous Journalism, living with and learning from the Sámi people in Arctic Norway (Sápmi on the Norwegian side).
In 2019, her first solo story for The New York Times, which she wrote and photographed, made the front page of the International Edition, covering Tunisia’s Queer Film Festival participants, where being gay is illegal. She has also written and photographed stories—for various outlets and self-published—including: a Nigerian adventure motorcyclist’s journey as she attempts to clinch a Guinness World Record crossing Africa (publishing Sept. 2025), racial inequality in the immigrant resettlement experience in Israel/Historic Palestine (2023), Ebola prevention in Rwanda (2019), the overlapping epidemics of HIV and domestic abuse in Tajikistan (2016), Reindeer Herding with a Sámi family on the Arctic Tundra (2017), and a long-form personal essay for Discontent Magazine: “The Miseducation of an Arab-Jew” (2025), detailing the rupture of Yemeni Jews from their culture and land at the hands of Zionists, why Arab-Jews specifically should hold inherent solidarity with Palestinians, and biographical details from Noa’s family history—victims of dispossession, then perpetrators of it.
Noa’s book, Homebound: a memoir traversing Oman, uses photography, hand-drawn maps, and intimate storytelling to document a solo road trip up the Omani coast, from the Yemeni border to the Strait of Hormuz, published in April 2025 by 24°36°.
Featured in & previous work for: Discontent, Raseef22, The New York Times, Apple, GQ Middle East, GEO Magazine (France), ESSES, BLAST FR, Service95, ROJO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), & UN Women
forever wandering
info@noavi.com