Jon Ortner

Visions of Paradise: American Wilderness

Author Biography

One of the world’s leading nature and scenic photographers, Jon Ortner is the acclaimed author of eight internationally published fine-art books on such wide-ranging topics as the icons and architecture of Manhattan, the beauty of the human form, the sacred places and people of Southeast Asia, and the landscapes and geological wonders of the American Southwest.

Jon’s achievements as an artist, scholar, and adventurer are especially reflective of a life

committed to passionately exploring the wonders and treasures of the natural word. His intrepid youth, largely spent fascinated by the study of diverse flora and fauna, forged him into an avid, erudite naturalist and wilderness hiker. Following academic pursuits in ecology and Eastern philosophy, he established a highly successful commercial photography studio in New York City with his wife and business partner, Martha McGuire.

Jon’s boundless curiosity, insatiable thirst for knowledge about people and places, and

deep-seated reverence for nature’s exquisiteness soon manifested itself in his photography. In 1971, with a creative intellect on fire and the urgent purpose felt only by true artists, he embarked on a photographic and spiritual journey to record and celebrate the world’s most remote and astonishingly beautiful sites. For twenty-five years, he and Martha trekked thousands of miles throughout the ancient lands of Southeast Asia, in many cases gaining rare access to forbidden sites. Against the backdrop of the magnificent Himalaya Mountains, they explored the geological wonders, sacred places, and people of Nepal, Bhutan, Ladakh, and Tibet. In India, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, China, and Indonesia, they immersed themselves in the mysteries of the some of the world’s most spectacular and profound religious and cultural sites.

The gorgeously produced large-format photography books emerging from these singular

experiences have for years, and for reprint after reprint, ignited the imaginations of thousands of readers. They include Where Every Breath Is a Prayer: A Photographic Pilgrimage into the Spiritual Heart of Asia, Angkor: Celestial Temples of the Khmer Empire, and Buddha, each unparalleled in its thematic, compositional, and technical artistry and rich with Jon’s deeply personal and scholarly writings on Hindu and Buddhist art, spiritual pilgrimage, and the role of sacred places in our lives.

In 2005, Jon turned his passion, creativity, and panoramic cameras on the unique, breathtaking scenery of the United States in a five-year odyssey of discovery deep into the deserts and canyons of the American West, which included trekking to isolated and nearly inaccessible locations on the Colorado Plateau and to secluded and sacred sites on Dine and Hopi Tribal Lands. This tenacious pursuit for perfection culminated in the award-winning, Canyon Wilderness of the Southwest, a widely distributed book published in three edition sizes, and which esteemed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has lauded as “…an indescribably sublime book, a testament to the power of our saved and sacred places to transform our lives, rearrange our molecules and make of us all, as John Muir would say, ‘kindred spirits.”

On the heels of this accomplishment comes Jon’s tour de force, Visions of Paradise:

American Wilderness, a masterwork of black-and-white, large-format photography paying tribute to America’s remaining unspoiled wild places. With its arresting imagery and thought-provoking reflections on our shared spiritual connection to the nation’s sacred lands, Visions of Paradise is destined to occupy a vaulted position in the genre of fine-art photography.

Based in the Berkshire Mountains on the border of New York and Massachusetts, Jon

and Martha currently divide their time between their worldwide journeys of discovery and commercial photography assignments. Jon’s advertising work has been featured in print and online by top international corporations that include Fuji, Kodak, and Nikon. His award-winning images and enlightening narratives have appeared in magazines such as GEO, Architectural Digest, Travel & Leisure, Outdoor Photographer, and National Geographic, and he has presented his work at the Rubin Museum of Art, the Explorers Club, and for the many of the National Parks.