Justin Wonnacott was born in Belleville, Ontario in 1950. He is a photographer who also teaches, curates and writes about his subject from time to time.

Recent projects include a large body of work dealing with public art in Canada's capital , an extensive examination of Ottawa's Somerset Street West made over a decade,images of fish titled“I remember and I forget”, “Necessary Pictures” which is made within the genre of street photography and most recently, images from the Atlantic and Gulf of St Lawrence shores. These portfolios are all accompanied by publications.

His work is represented in many institutional collections in Canada including the National Gallery of Canada's CMCP , the Canada Council Art Bank, theNational Archives of Canada,the Carleton University Art Gallery, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Ryerson University Image Centre,the Ottawa Art Gallery andothers.

He currently teaches photography at the University of Ottawa in the department of fine arts, he has also taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and the Ottawa School of Art. In 2005 he received the Karsh Award from the City of Ottawa and in 2009 he was inducted as a member of the Royal Canadian Academy