John Comino-James first visited Havana in 2002 and has returned many times since. “Havana: Intimations of Departure” is his third book of photographs drawn from that long engagement with the city. What distinguishes it from a straightforward portrait of place is its premise: the book contemplates the visual experiences and emotional connections the photographer might lose were he unable to walk its streets again. The result is not a survey of landmarks but an inquiry into how a city becomes legible through repeated looking, and how fragile that legibility can be. In his own account, streets he thought he knew well could abruptly feel unfamiliar when seen through his photographs.

The book is arranged in six sequences. Buildings are treated as carriers of historical time; elsewhere the energy of the street presses forward; elsewhere still, the photographs settle on moments of individual preoccupation and solitude. Across 168 pages and roughly ninety-five duotone and colour images, these shifts in register give the collection a deliberated pacing rather than a single prevailing mood.

The closing section changes tactics. Through text and colour, Comino-James responds to a tourist industry that proposes Cuba is on the verge of change and must be seen now, before its distinctive character is altered forever. He also counters the proposition that the Havana landscape simply presents an opportunity for great dramatic photos for competitions and portfolios. In their place he points toward a wider culture of art and politics beyond the Che Guevara T-shirts and other souvenirs.

Comino-James was born in Somerset and lives near Thame in Oxfordshire. He has published five previous photography books, among them “Nearly Every Tuesday,” on Thame’s weekly street market; “Fairground Attraction,” on the way of life of travelling showmen; “A Few Streets, a Few People,” a portrait of the Cayo Hueso barrio in Havana; “In a Very English Town,” on Thame as an English market town; and “Fortunate Steps,” made in Havana’s Calzada del Diez de Octubre. His work has been exhibited in Thame, Oxford, London and Havana. For a collector, this volume’s interest lies in the combination: an established photographer’s extended relationship with one city, a careful sequence structure, and a body of work that tests what a photograph of a place can honestly claim to hold.