Photographers often speak of the camera as a device that simultaneously engages and distances you from the reality of what you are witnessing.

I was collected from my hotel in Honduras by my host — a female physician around my own age who had transitioned from clinical practice to a role with the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), monitoring community health and welfare across the region.

Her English was fluent; my Spanish was not. We drove several hours to a small, remote town, where we visited women at a local refuge and hospital.

We were met by the attending medical team, who introduced us to Daria, a 20-year-old woman in the late stages of pregnancy. I spent some time photographing the doctors, nurses, and Daria herself before she was taken, calmly and quickly, for an emergency caesarean.

I was asked whether I wanted to document the procedure. It was my first time in an operating theatre and I was uncertain how I would respond, but I agreed. The surgery itself did not unsettle me. What stayed with me was a remark the doctor made afterwards — that there had been a window of no more than twenty minutes between my first photographs and a very real risk of losing both mother and child.