Forming part of the High Weald of South East England, the Ashdown Forest is a unique landscape, moulded over the centuries by the iron industry and now a conservation area of international significance. It is also the setting for AA Milne’s stories of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin, that have imposed a fictional world of childhood innocence across the Forest’s historic sense of place.

Using these real and fictional narratives as a background to his work, artist Lea Andrews undertook a PhotoWorks commission in the Forest, during the winter of 1998 and the spring and summer of 1999.

Inspired by the insatiable curiosity of his young daughter, Andrews enacted a rediscovery of his own curiosity and the art of seeing. For Andrews, this delicate and highly personal book holds that moment of discovery, bringing together a number of his photographs and creating the frame for an emotional as well as visual response to the Forest.