Jon Ortner is an American photographer. He was born in 1951 in Great Neck, on Long Island, New York. He studied photography, ecology and Eastern philosophy at the University of Kansas. After his first year there, he traveled to India and Nepal. In 1978 he moved to Manhattan with his wife, Martha McGuire, and they opened a commercial photo studio.
His work in Asia shows the Himalaya and the sacred places and people of Southeast Asia. Later he turned to the deserts and canyons of the American West. This work became Canyon Wilderness of the Southwest, a five-year project that began in 2005.
His book Visions of Paradise: American Wilderness was published by The Images Publishing Group in 2024. It has 324 pages and 200 black-and-white photographs made over more than twenty years. He shot them on black-and-white film with Fuji GX617 panoramic view cameras and a Pentax 67II camera. His earlier book Peak of Perfection was published by Schiffer Publishing. It has 176 pages and 143 black-and-white nude portraits of dancers, athletes and gymnasts.
