Creativity Jijiji
Creativity Jijiji: "Conversations about creativity"
This podcast amplifies the voices of our true leaders—the artists. Writers, composers, producers, singers, actors, and poets show us new ways to see ourselves and the world around us. They illuminate the invisible threads that connect us, revealing the deep ties of our shared humanity.
At a time when we must come together as citizens of a small and fragile planet, the voices of artists matter more than ever.
Creativity Jijiji goes beyond the spotlight to explore the mysteries of creativity—where it comes from, why it moves us, and how it shapes our world.
Join us as we listen, learn, and celebrate the creative minds guiding us into the future.
Creativity Jijiji
Lost Temples & the High Himalaya: Jon Ortner's Epic Quest for the Sacred
Join us as visionary traveler, author, and photographer Jon Ortner talks about his extraordinary adventures across some of the world's most sacred landscapes. From the mystical realms of India's Amarnath Caves to the breathtaking heights of the Himalaya, Jon's passion for understanding and capturing the spiritual essence of ancient religions becomes a voyage of artistic and personal transformation. Hear about his 65-day trek through Nepal's Kali Gorge, where the interplay of nature and spirituality deepens his creative expression and purpose.
Embark on a visual and spiritual pilgrimage with Jon to the sacred city of Varanasi, where he documents intimate rituals along the Ganges River, culminating in his book "Every Breath is a Prayer." Then, journey with him to the Colorado Plateau, guided by Harold Simpson, a Dine descendant, to discover the enchanting beauty and spirituality of Native American sacred lands. Through evocative storytelling and stunning photography, this episode offers profound inspiration and insight into the transformative power of sacred journeys for artists, travelers, and spiritual seekers alike.
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When I was traveling in Australia, I went deep into the outback, in the center of this amazing continent, and I was taught about songlines. Recently I was on a trip and I was talking with a fellow musician about songlines and he said what are they? How can you describe them? The only way I could describe them is deep pulses that seem to come from the stars and you follow them, and if you wander off your song line that you're following, the pulses grow lower and fade, and if you move back into the center of it, they are strong and insistent. This is Chris McHale, and welcome to Creativity to Gigi. And today we are listening to a story from a visionary traveler, john Ortner, who is a author and photographer and who has produced a series of absolutely gorgeous, drop-dead, compelling books about his journey, his pilgrimage to the sacred mountains and sacred rivers of India, to the southwest canyons and plateaus of America, all in search of the heart of the world. Let's just sit back for a minute and listen to John tell us his story.
Speaker 1:What propels you to be an artist? And for me that has to do with passion and falling in love with something, and I don't think that any art is produced without this passion and the passion for making the art. And what does it give you? So I asked my parents for a butterfly net and I started collecting butterflies and I then started buying all the guidebooks and I turned into a fanatic, a nature lover, and that's what propelled me to start hiking, to become interested in science. And then, a little bit after that, I was watching TV and on TV was Andy's gang, and on Andy's gang was Rama of the Jungle, and essentially it was the Hardy Boys in India. And I saw India and I saw these young kids were going into the jungles of India and they was like the Hardy Boys in Asia, and that to me was like the ultimate adventure.
Speaker 1:Eventually I read Siddhartha and I didn't even understand that Siddhartha was the life of the Buddha. So right after high school, I just got this bug why don't I go to India? So, me and my friends, right out of high school, we go to India. So we were bumming around India. We went to Kashmir. There was a hippie who came to our houseboat on the lakes of Kashmir and he said you know, there's this cave not too far from here and all the holy men go up to the cave and you should go and check out this cave. So, without knowing anything, we hired a porter and we took a trek for a week up into the Himalaya, and, of course, it was an unbelievable hike. It was the first time that I had seen the Himalaya with these turquoise lakes. We trekked and we made it to this cave and in the cave were thousands of the Shiva holy men.
Speaker 1:Now, when I, of course, started studying this and became more versed in this, I found out that there are five million of these sadhus and the sadhus are the ascetics and they are the ones that invented yoga, meditation and there's five million of them wandering on pilgrimage in India. And what we found out was that the place that we went to, which is called Amarnath Caves, was one of the key pilgrimage places in all of India. Not only that, we had come just before the giant festival, so it was 10,000 holy men and two crazy Western hippies who didn't know anything. And when we got up into the cave and were surrounded by all these holy men, many of who spoke English. And for the first time they told me about the pilgrimages and what was the purpose of going on pilgrimage. And the Sadhus said to me do you know why you're here? And I'd say no, we just walked up here, I know nothing. They said you are here for darshan. You were brought here for a purpose. I said what is darshan? He said darshan is sight, not just regular sight, holy sight. They turned to me and said you didn't come here by accident. You came here because you were brought here for a reason. And that just, of course, blew my mind.
Speaker 1:And when I saw the holy men, I went back to the university where I was studying, and I started studying photography and Eastern philosophy and I realized that's what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to take pictures of the oldest religion in the world and I wanted to take pictures of these magical and mystical places and tell these stories in magazines et cetera. So I went back to the University of Kansas. I started one of my professors was the leading Sanskrit scholar in the world I started studying Hinduism and Buddhism and then I started going to India almost every year and following the Hindu holy men on their pilgrimage routes. So it was really an incredible journey and, of course, I ultimately did find the inner spiritual nature of India and I ended up going there many times and it changed my life.
Speaker 1:The next time I went to Asia, I went to Nepal. I've spent most of my career in the high Himalaya and what was I studying was the highest mountains and the deepest gorges in the world and the sacred rivers that come from the Himalaya. So it's a sacred topography, the oldest in the world, 10,000 millennia ago. The more I learned about India, I did this combination. I was interested not only in the science of the Himalaya, the highest mountains, the deepest gorges. Everyone knows that the highest mountain on earth is Everest and of course that's on the border of Nepal and Tibet. But few people know where the deepest gorge in the world is, and in central Nepal, chris, is a gorge that is three and a half times as deep as the Grand Canyon. It's called the Kali Gorge and Martha and I did an expedition in the Kali Gorge 65 days in a tent. We walked over 500 miles. So we started doing these incredible expeditions through the Himalaya, not only to the highest mountains but to the deepest gorges and the three deepest gorges in the world the Kali, the Marziandi and the Buri Gandaki. Those three gorges are mind-blowing because in the bottoms of the gorges they're tropical and the tops of the gorges go into Tibet, where it snows even in July and August. I had incredible experiences and for the first 30 years of my career, that's all I was interested in.
Speaker 1:So I went to Bhutan and again, most people don't even know where Bhutan is or have ever heard of it. It's the last Buddhist kingdom on earth. It is in between China and India and the king owns everything, including the airlines, and India, and the king owns everything, including the airlines. And in Bhutan, because it's a strict Buddhist society, there is no killing whatsoever. So fishing is illegal, hunting is illegal, and Martha and I went to Bhutan and you have to have permission from the Bhutanese government to enter the country. At first they only left a few hundred people a year in. Now it's up to about 7,000 a year that they allow in. When Martha and I went in there, they only allowed about 5,000 people a year and we trekked across Bhutan a 30-day hike in which we walked about 300 miles, and because there's been no hunting, we had herds of blue sheep that had never been hunted, and literally walked to within 10 feet of us, and at night in our tent we heard snow leopards up into the mountains echoing through the high peaks. So everywhere we went in, the Himalaya was a magical experience and we ended up hiking the Himalaya of India, the Himalaya of Nepal, bhutan, tibet and Ladakh.
Speaker 1:And I never really wanted to photograph in America until I happened to open a magazine and in that magazine I saw pictures of a place that looked like Mars, and now I know that that is the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. So for the first time I stopped going to Asia and I started going to the American wilderness, and then for the next 10 or 15 years I was only interested in the canyons and deserts of the American West. So my books are all a combination of fine art, photography and scholarship, because I try to explain well why is this important, how did this come to be, why is it worthy of taking pictures of it and why should we be interested either in the Asian cultures or in the deserts and canyons of the American West? So my first book was when Every Breath is a Prayer, a photographic pilgrimage into the spiritual heart of Asia. Then the next book I did was we happened to be working in Bangkok on one of our trips.
Speaker 1:Angkor Wat opens for the first time in 30 years. I dropped everything and we hopped on a plane and we went to Angkor. Of course, angkor Wat is the largest religious building in the world, with more stone than the pyramids. And not only is Angkor there in the jungles of northern Cambodia, but hundreds and hundreds of other sacred temples in the jungles of Cambodia. So while we were shooting there, the Khmer Rouge surrendered, pol Pot died and it opened for tourism. And for 10 years, on and off, we worked in Cambodia. So the Angkor book was a $95 museum book with slipcase, et cetera.
Speaker 1:And again I had to figure out well, why was I there? And I had to become an expert on the Khmer civilization. And these temples were Hindu originally, so they were Shiva temples and Vishnu temples, and then in the 16th century, buddhism came to Cambodia and the later temples are Buddhist. So it all filled, it all fit in with my love of sacred topography and Hindu and Buddhist iconography, and that continued. So the first book was when Every Breath is a Prayer. It's about Hindu pilgrimage and the sacred mountains. And then came the Buddha book, which was about Buddhist artwork and Buddhist temple architecture, and then Angkor.
Speaker 1:And then, after doing those three books on Eastern philosophy, all of a sudden I decided that I was going to start doing something on America and I started going to the Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness and the Grand Staircase and that's when I came out with Canyon Wilderness of the Southwest, which was a five-year project going to all the slot canyons and the rare locations on the Hopi and Navajo tribal lands. So all of my books. To kind of go to the heart of the matter is that all of my books were created because I had a passion about these places. I found a place that thrilled me, that I thought was worthy and that I thought that other people needed to see. So I never thought of money. I never thought how am I going to make money with this? First I wanted to go to a place that thrilled me, that I had a passion, a desire to go to, and of course, all of these were amazing adventures. And I look back now at all the risky things that I did between climbing in the Himalaya and traveling all through India, and I just think how lucky I was that I never got hurt and all of my adventures were fantastic, and later on I started going to Myanmar, which is most people know as Burma, and there that country is now closed and they're having a horrible civil war. So it's amazing how even access to these places goes up and down through history and sometimes you have to be very patient to to gain entry to these places.
Speaker 1:And all this time, while I was going back and forth to Asia, martha and I moved into the city and I had to figure out a way. Well, how am I going to make money to continue these expeditions through Southeast Asia? And so I decided that I was going to become a real estate photographer and I started. I had always been photographing the skyline of Manhattan, and then I started becoming interested in skyscrapers and I started shooting portraits of these new skyscrapers. And I was just so lucky because I fell into a part of photography that not that many people were doing and which I could make a lot of money very quickly. So I would work for six or seven months. I'd put together $30,000. As soon as I had that money, boom, I was back to Cambodia or back to Nepal or back to India. So I did actually have to have some commercial support for all of this, but it was all driven by beauty and what I love.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because I think it was from one of your material, some of the material that you gave me about this quote from Terry Tempest Williams A wilderness reminds us of what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separated from. So, like your search through these areas seem to be, you're looking in the wilderness for that essential humanness, in a way. I mean the roots of what we are, of who we are.
Speaker 1:Exactly. You know, when I first the first book, where Every Breath Is a Prayer, was filled with portraits and I did hundreds of portraits Since I was following the holy men I decided that I was going to start shooting the rarest portraits of these ascetics. So for years I shot portraits of the holy men and I think the most amazing place that I did that was in Varanasi, also known as Benares, and that's the holiest city in all of India. That is where the Ganges River comes down from the Himalaya and goes across India and Benares is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Now, if you Google, sometimes they say Damascus is the oldest city in the world, but generally Benares is considered the oldest city in the world. And what drew me there? First of all, it was the city of Shiva. All the holy men must come to Varanasi, to the city of light, to that city. So it's the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. It's the city of Shiva. But then also I was astounded it's the oldest crematorium in the world.
Speaker 1:The goal of most Hindus in India is to be burned on the Ganges in Benares. So I knew that I wanted to photograph the crematoriums and how they burn the bodies on the Ganges River. Well, when I got there I found out that it's illegal to photograph the cremations. And I was there for a month and I was trying to figure out. And even National Geographic, when they did a story on Benares, they snuck the photographs illegally. They went at night and took a boat out on the Ganges and then shot back to the burning cremation fires. I decided, no, that's not what I want. I want to do intimate closeups of the sadhus who are officiating at the crematorium and who are burning the bodies.
Speaker 1:And I happened to be walking through there without my camera and I had a little guide, a young boy 12 years old, that I paid to take me around, buy me oranges etc. And he brought me to this guy and the guy said to him why don't you come back, have tea with me? Don't bring your camera, I want to talk to you. So Martha said don't go, they're going to rip you off. This is a trap or whatever. I go back and the guy explains to me that his father and his family owned the Burning Guts and that he was in control of the burning guts.
Speaker 1:Well, I had a blad of the book that I was working on, where Every Breath Is a Prayer. The book hadn't come out yet, but I had pictures from it, where I had taken pictures of all the holy men. I showed it to him and he said okay, I see that this is going to be an incredibly important book and that you're delving into the importance of Shiva worship and you're delving into the importance of Benares. And I'll tell you what. You can come up into my room above the crematorium and I'll let you take pictures of the burning bodies. And I said yes, but I've heard, when the police see tourists trying to do this, they come up to you and then they extort huge money from you. Then he explained to me no, the police are mine, they will not bother you because you're with me and this is my property and my family's property.
Speaker 1:And in when Every Breath is a Prayer is not only the picture, one picture where 12 bodies are being burned at once and of course, what happens is they bring the body down to the river and first it is dipped into the holy Ganges to purify it and sanctify it.
Speaker 1:Then the body is put on a pile of wood and the fire is started and the body is burned. If you're wealthy enough, you can afford sandalwood and the bodies are burned on this fragrant sandalwood, but the average Indian is just born on regular firewood. Once the body is burned, special holy men who are allowed to touch the defiled dead bodies then take the ashes, and the ashes are then pushed into the Ganges. And I was able to photograph all the most secret and unphotographed traditions, traditions that have been going on for 10 millennium, that no other photographer had actually done. And so, throughout my career, I feel that I've been blessed, that because my aim was so pure, because I was not trying to make money with it, I wasn't trying to do anything other than show the beauty of these ancient traditions and the importance of these ancient traditions that I was given access, over and over again, to things that most people had never even seen, let alone photograph.
Speaker 2:Did you feel you were trespassing a little bit there?
Speaker 1:at all. No, I never felt that way. You never felt that way.
Speaker 2:I was only 19 years old when I first went to India, never felt that way.
Speaker 1:I was only 19 years old when I first went to India, so I was kind of an old India hand. I had been there so many times and I had such great respect for the Shiva worshipers, the ascetics, the temples and I didn't feel I was trespassing. I would always think back to the Amarnath cave, sadhu, who said you're here for darshan Holy sight, and not only that, you were brought here. So even though I don't really believe in fate, when I look back I have to think that my career has been just magical and I seem to have made the right choices all along.
Speaker 1:Are these photographs in this book yes, all of them. And that's the first book when Every Breath is a Prayer, and then the subtitle is A Photographic Pilgrimage into the Spiritual Heart of Asia, Essentially everywhere that Buddhist and Hindu, the two great sacred meditative religions, are worshipped, and of course those are the religions that came from the Himalaya and it's essentially the worship of the highest mountains in the world and the sacred rivers that come down from the Himalaya. Then even the Buddha book also has incredible images of Buddhist art and Buddhist temples and temple iconography. So all of the books kind of explain this, but primarily these are fine art books. I'm trying to show these objects, these ancient traditions, in the most beautiful way that I could.
Speaker 2:And these are available for sale, right?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, where Every Breath is a Prayer is on Amazon and it's selling because it's out of print. I mean it's not expensive at all. Originally it was like a $60 book. I see copies of it now for $15. Same with Buddha. So, yes, these books are all available. Just type the name into Amazon or just type my name, as long as you spell it J-O-N, because I'm a Jonathan, so it's John Ortner and all the books will come up. And the new book that we just did, which is this black and white book that is Visions of Paradise, american Wilderness, and that for 15 years I've been shooting the American Wilderness. So it's pretty much the West that you know Bryce Canyon, zion Canyon, yosemite, yellowstone but then the West that you don't know the Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, the Grand Staircase and the, like I said, the Hopi and the Dina sacred Navajo lands.
Speaker 2:So are you connecting the spirit you're feeling in the American continent with the spirit you're feeling in the Eastern continent?
Speaker 1:Very much so, because many of the places that I photographed were on Hopi and Dina land, even Monument Valley, where Hollywood shot so many movies. Don't forget, in Monument Valley you're only allowed Westerners, white people. You're on the reservation and don't forget, they own the reservation, so you are essentially a white trespasser. So in order even to go to Monument Valley, first you have to pay an entrance fee. Then you are only allowed to go on the 17-mile road that is open to white people. Now, as soon as you step out of your car, if you start walking across the deserts in Monument Valley, that is against the law. You are now trespassing. So you have to have either a Hopi guide or a Navajo guide with you once you go into the wilderness of Monument Valley. And another quick, funny story so I go to Monument Valley for canyon wilderness. I've got this contract and I'm doing this huge book on the Colorado Plateau, the canyons, deserts and slot canyons of the Colorado Plateau. So I go to Monument Valley, I hire a guy to come and pick me up at four in the morning so that I can get to these prime places before sunrise. And don't forget, I'm using a view camera, the way Ansel Adams did. So I have to assemble my camera and I have to put sheet film and a 120 roll film. So I have to do all of this in the dark. So I hire a guide and he shows up, and he shows up late. I miss the sunrise. I smell alcohol on his breath. I'm very disappointed. I pay him the $300 anyway because I felt so guilty and so bad. So then two days go by. I said I got to get a different guy. I hire another guy who was going to take me up to Hunts Mesa, a very remote part of Monument Valley. Well, he shows up 3 o'clock. We get in his car. We get halfway to Hunts Mesa, his car breaks down. And same thing, I pay him $300, I feel bad, he needs to fix his car. So now I've been there five days, I haven't gotten anything unusual, nothing. I'm staying at a Marriott hotel or something, and I see the manager and I tell him that I'm a pro photographer, I'm working on a book, and I say I've hired two guys, I spent $600, I haven't gotten a single good picture yet. He says well, that's because you don't have the right guy. I said, oh really, who's the right guy? He said Harold Simpson. I said oh really, who's the right guy? He said Harold Simpson. I said well, that doesn't really sound like a Navajo name. He said, au contraire, he's the great grandson of Gray Whiskers, a famous Dine chief. So I call up Harold Simpson and Harold says to me well, you know, I've worked on Hollywood movies. I know all the locations. I have a new truck. Why don't you meet me at the 7-Eleven? I'll go over your shoot list and then we'll arrange to shoot. So I said OK, great, how am I going to recognize you? He said oh, you won't have any trouble recognizing me. I'm 6'3", I weigh about 300 pounds and I'm an albino. I weigh about 300 pounds and I'm an albino. I said you're an albino Navajo. He said yes, I go to the 7-Eleven. There is a mountain of a man with Johnny Winter white hair down to his shoulders. That was Harold Simpson, the great grandson of Gray Whiskers.
Speaker 1:Harold started taking me around, day after day. He took me to all the sacred places of the Dina, and the first day he took me to Mystery Valley, and on and on and on. And I'll never forget. I asked Harold. I said well, I've seen these photographs where the dunes are orange. There's a place in Monument Valley with bright orange dunes. He said yeah, I know where that is, I'll take you there.
Speaker 1:So another day he shows up at three o'clock with his new truck. We go, we're driving for an hour. He pulls over on the side of the road and he and this is again in the dark, okay, and way off in the distance. He gets out of the truck. He says do you see that rise? About two miles away, that way, way over there. I said yeah. He says start walking. That's where you're going. I said really. He said get going or you're going to miss sunrise. So I leave Harold at the truck and I start walking in the dark. I'm walking, and walking, and walking.
Speaker 1:I get to the base of this giant sand dune. I'm wearing a 40-pound pack with film tripods and large format cameras. I go up the dune, I make it to the top of the dune, the sun rises, the dunes are orange for as far as the eye can see and I get this incredible shoot After a couple of hours of shooting. And of course it was the spring and all the great pictures of the dunes of Monument Valley are in the spring. The wind makes ripples and patterns in the fine sand, and this is not regular sand. This is sand that is almost like talcum powder. It is so soft and so even very hard to walk through and absolutely stunningly beautiful. So I climb this giant dune, I get my shots with the orange dunes, with the wind patterns all over them, and I start walking back.
Speaker 1:The sun is now coming up and I smell the sage. The sage is heating up from the sun and it's like perfume. And as I'm coming back from the wind, I hear these notes floating. And I'm walking and I'm going. What Is that? The wind? Or is that some kind of music that I'm hearing? As I'm walking, I'm hearing what is kind of like a flute sound. I keep walking off in the distance. Three quarters of a mile away, I see a giant boulder. There is Harold with his white hair sitting on the boulder playing the Navajo flute. And at that moment, the smell of the sage, the sound of the Navajo flute and miles of colored sand dunes. And I realized this is the sacred land of the Native Americans.
Speaker 2:This has been Creativity to Gigi, and we have been listening to an amazing story from John Ortner photographer, author, traveler, pilgrim, who, with his wife, martha McGuire, has traveled the world in search of sacred places, photographing and writing about them in a series of amazing books that I highly recommend Just beautiful books, and if you go to OrtnerPhotocom you can kind of follow the path to where you can buy these things. Support John and his work. This is Chris McHale. Thank you so much for listening. You get a chance to subscribe to this podcast.
Speaker 2:Leave a comment on this podcast, visit studioggio and subscribe to our newsletter so we can keep in touch with you, maybe even join us. I mean, membership is free. We're building all sorts of really interesting creative projects. We're following our songlines through the digital world and getting to someplace really interesting. This has been Creativity to Gigi, and thank you so much for listening.
