Jeff Schultz’s Faces of Iditarod project has collected more than 500 photos and stories, with more to come

If you follow the Iditarod, you’ve seen the photos: stark, intimate closeups of faces -- both human and canine -- against a dark background, with bright eyes and every pore visible. Nothing hides.

“I wouldn’t say it’s harsh lighting,” photographer Jeff Schultz, 60, said recently, “but it’s direct enough that you can see who the person is. It really shows the human side.”

Or the dog side, if you’re a dog.

These deceptively simple portraits are the culmination of decades of work -- and part of a fascinating history, and friendship, that stretches back to the fledgling days of the race itself.

Schultz, a self-described family man from Anchorage, is in his 40th year as the Iditarod’s official photographer. But by last winter, he was starting to get burned out.

He had always envisioned the ultimate Iditarod photos as small dog teams against big, Alaska landscapes, so he decided to change course and focus on the opposite, taking portraits and recording interviews of people involved with the race. The stories are collected at facesofiditarod.com.

“There’s thousands of people here that never get recognition,” Schultz said. “Like back in Kaltag, there’s somebody who just got recruited, at the last minute, to help get people back and forth to the airport. Now he’s a Face of Iditarod, and his voice is there, too. I just wish that I’d thought of this 30 or 40 years ago, because what history we’d have.”

Schultz never intended to get involved with mushing. He met Joe Redington Sr. at a bluegrass concert in the 1980s (Dr. Schultz band -- “great music,” no relation) and thought a portrait of the famous Father of the Iditarod might boost his fledgling photography career. Redington ended up inviting Schultz to his place.

“He’s the kind of guy that wanted to get everyone involved in the Iditarod,” Schultz said. “He said, ‘Jeff, I’ve got 300 sled dogs here. Why don’t you take a team and mush to Nome?’ I had no mushing experience, but that’s the kind of guy Joe was.”

Schultz did some mushing with Redington, and though he loved Redington’s goals of keeping sled dogs and culture alive, the lifestyle never tempted him. For one thing, Redington would come home from training runs at 3 a.m., when sensible people were asleep, and then he’d still have to feed and water the dogs. But more importantly: “Back then they used these brass snaps at the end of harnesses,” Schultz recalls. “They’d get filled with frozen poop, and you’d have to hold your hand on it to thaw it out. So I decided not to be a dog musher.”

Upon hearing that mushers still thaw poop-covered snaps with their hands, Schultz shakes his head. “That’s just not the way to live.”

He started following the Iditarod by plane and snowmachine, documenting the race year after year. Schultz pays for everything himself, except airplane gas and oil, and donates the use of his photos to the Iditarod. When Exxon Mobil decided to sponsor Faces of Iditarod this spring, Schultz was able to afford a dedicated pilot so he could take photos from as many checkpoints as possible.

The project has had a powerful response.

“I think people are really excited to hear about the unsung heroes on the trail,” said Sarah Manriquez, 29, Schultz’s assistant and a photographer herself, whose latest work involves helping homeless people in Fairbanks document their lives. “Of course the mushers and the canine athletes are the stars, but there are thousands of people who make this race possible. This gives people a platform to tell their own stories.”

One of those people is Schultz himself, but his own face is conspicuously missing from the archive. What would it take for him to add his own portrait -- and story -- to the collection?

“Probably not much,” he said, chuckling. “If people told me they wanted it.”