We visited Havana over the New Year, 2016-17, not long after Fidel Castro had died. For a range of reasons, I found the experience quite overwhelming. I am not a fan of dictatorships or police states, for one thing; nor do I find the poverty of others remotely romantic. At the same time, I found in Havana a resilience and liveliness that was impossible to ignore. My earlier portfolio on Havana consciously tried to reflect this unease; this duality.

Revisiting the photographs from this trip, almost eight years later, I see that my eye and my camera saw much more, and with more empathy and curiosity, than my more critical and judgmental mind did at the time. My appreciation and understanding of photography, and my feeling for the processing of my images, together with my technical skills, have also evolved.

The photographs in this series, then, are a reconsideration, both aesthetically and imaginatively, of the earlier series and of our Havana visit.

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