Andrea Jones

Even though Andrea Jones loved photography from a young age and made it a formative part of her education, it took a while, as she says, to find her focus. She took on various photographic jobs, from buying and selling cameras to assisting professionals and working in studios, but it was while photographing chimpanzees in Africa that she began to realize where her love of photography might lead her. “I went to do a photo shoot documenting a protégé of Jane Goodall, the primatologist,” she says, recalling the trip to the Outamba-Kilimi National Park in Sierra Leone. She continues: “This was the early 1990s, I was photographing chimpanzees, and I had a video camera and a Leica, and I didn’t find photographing very dark, fast-moving animals in the forest to be the easiest! I enjoyed photographing them, but it wasn’t what I thought was going to be my strength.”

Gradually, Andrea became more interested in focusing on the discarded fruits the chimps had been eating, as well as the landscape and plants of the national park. “I knew that I was better at photographing plants.” Given her family history, it might now seem obvious that she would find her photographic future in gardens and plants but, then again, the most interesting garden path is rarely