  Perturbative QCD is applied to investigate the near threshold heavy
quarkonium photoproduction at large momentum transfer. We take into account the
contributions from the leading three-quark Fock states of the nucleon. The
dominant contribution comes from the three-quark Fock state with one unit quark
orbital angular momentum (OAM) whereas that from zero quark OAM is suppressed
at the threshold. From our analysis, we also show that there is no direct
connection between the near threshold heavy quarkonium photoproduction and the
gluonic gravitational form factors of the nucleon. Based on the comparison
between our result and recent GlueX data of $J/\psi$ photoproduction, we make
predictions for $\psi'$ and $\Upsilon$ (1S,2S) states which can be tested in
future experiments.
