The photoproduction of charmonium near threshold has attracted a lot of attention in the past few decades as a key channel to access important aspects of non-perturbative QCD. It has been proposed to give experimental access to the gravitational form factors of the proton, its mass radius, and the trace anomaly contribution to the nucleon mass. In addition, this process is the signal channel for the hidden-charm pentaquarks previously seen at LHCb. I will discuss the general assumptions which underlie our understanding of this process as well as the recent analysis of new Jefferson Lab data which has given us an unprecedented look of J/psi photoproduction in this energy regime.