In March 2023, I had the pleasure to join the medical team of Interplast-France/Chirurgie Sans Frontières for a surgical humanitarian mission in north Senegal, where I have had the opportunity to photograph some of the patients they were able to operate over the week spent there.

The multitude of faces and colours encountered within the first few minutes could only feed my instant fascination for this place and its population.

I mostly focused on taking portraits of people in the waiting area, quietly waiting for their turn, either for a consultation over the first day of the mission, or for their surgery during the days onwards. I had the chance to discuss with a few of them, even though the communication was rather difficult as a wide part of the population in north Senegal doesn’t speak French fluently. But, nevertheless, that little contact we made was enough for me, as the most important thing is to be able to create a comfortable environment between each other, which could therefore allow me to capture some of the people’s expressions and situations in their most natural aspect.