Portland Timbers: How axe portraits embody the Rose City | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

EDITOR'S NOTE: In celebration of Major League Soccer's 30th season, MLSsoccer.com is exploring untold stories about all 30 clubs. "30 Clubs, 30 Stories" will be unveiled throughout 2025.

Whether you’re walking to Providence Park, stepping off a MAX Light Rail train, climbing out of a rideshare vehicle or, in peak PDX style, pedaling up by bike, the faces are probably the first element that draws your eye.

The swooping eaves, thick strands of climbing ivy and classic theater-style marquee are striking. But scan the exterior of the historic downtown home of the Portland Timbers and their sibling club the Thorns, and what really sticks out are the faces of fans staring out from an array of massive posters – some smiling, most with a fierce ‘game face,’ a varied cross section of the city hefting one of the traditional tools of the wood industry, the region’s oldest trade, from hatchets to chainsaws.

These are the axe portraits.

Rite of passage

Initially conceived almost 15 years ago to promote the club’s entry into Major League Soccer after decades in the lower divisions, these photographs are now a local institution, a cherished rite of passage for the proud faithful who flock to the Goose Hollow neighborhood to commune with their team on matchdays.

“We had a pop-up team store in downtown Portland,” recalled Craig Mitchelldyer, the Timbers’ club photographer since 2003, in a conversation with MLSsoccer.com this week. “I set up shop there and we shot people for, I don't remember, two or three days straight that first year.

“That was kind of when you realized, like, dang, this is going to be a very popular thing. We have people waiting for hours and hours and hours. … And it's just kind of grown and grown and grown every year.”

Mitchelldyer estimates that he photographed about 500 fans a day that first go-round, working with just one backdrop station. The concept resonated immediately, with many more lining up to take part when the portraits returned for Portland's fifth MLS season, which also coincided with the 40th anniversary of their 1975 birth in the old North American Soccer League.

This time, the public had the chance to vote on which ones best epitomized their city and its love affair with the team, the winners splashed onto a series of billboards around town in larger-than-life proportions. Posing with twin axes crossed over her shoulders, Shaley Howard was among those who made the cut, so to speak, and it changed her life in ways she couldn’t have imagined.

“On one hand, it was a monumental, incredible experience to be able to be up on a billboard,” Howard told MLSsoccer.com this week. “More than that, my personal background, and the age I am, of 57, and growing up in this culture as a lesbian – a very closeted lesbian – for years and years and years, to bring that kind of full circle in my own personal life, to be like, ‘Oh no, there you are up on this billboard as a butch lesbian,’ and being embraced, too.

“Sometimes it's shocking – sometimes people can't tell if I'm a man or a woman or whatever, androgynous. But it didn't seem to matter for the majority of people.”

Environment of tolerance

Becoming an overnight local celebrity of sorts was a new and occasionally uncomfortable experience for Howard. In the ensuing months, however, she realized just how significant it was that someone like her had become a face of the club. One new arrival to town messaged her to share that seeing those signs helped confirm the Rose City was a welcoming place for LGBTQ people. Yet the most powerful interaction started with a call from the mother of an 8-year-old girl named Snapper.

“She had just reached out and said, ‘Hey, can you come meet me and my daughter?’ I went over to their house in Northwest Hills, and her daughter was just adorable, huge dimples, and she knew she was a lesbian,” recalled Howard. “Then it was revealed, it's like, 'Oh, I am here because she saw this image of me as this butch lesbian, part of this community that they don't really know anything about. They're very in the heteronormative community and wanting to help their daughter, wanting to embrace whatever path she was on.' And she was very clear that she was lesbian.”

Howard had come of age in a drastically different environment, at a time when homophobia, even outright hatred towards people like her, was the norm. To see Snapper find her identity in an environment of love and tolerance, let alone contribute to it herself, was almost overwhelming.

“This is dating me: The only image I ever saw was Billie Jean King,” said Howard with a laugh. “I had a poster of her on my wall as a kid, and we didn't even really have the language to talk about what it was I was experiencing. I knew it was not good at the time, at least … anybody that was out and visible, they were ridiculed. They were ridiculed.

“So to see this little girl, who knew exactly who she was, blew my mind. And so that connection started there, because she really needed somebody that she could look up to, even if she didn't even know me. Again, visibility is so important,” she added. “The Timbers billboard was huge. And my ego loved it. It was fantastic, right? But the impact that it had was far greater. Far greater.”

A growing tradition

Given the impact of the axe portraits, which then and now are free and open to the public, it only made sense for PTFC to run it back for season 10 in 2020, and again this year as the Timbers mark their 50th birthday.

Somewhere along the way, they came to represent something more than just fandom, something more like a manifestation of an enduring bond between a team and its community, a lifelong relationship. And what it means to be a Portlander, even.

“We had about 4,000 people through over two weekends,” said Mitchelldyer of this year’s edition, which involved four stations, seven photographers and 12-hour days for him and his colleagues. “We uploaded 31,298 photos to our website; 26,567 of those were downloaded from the website over the course of the day, and we had 2,300-ish accounts created on that website.

“In 2020 we did three and a half days, and so we extended it to a fourth full day this year so that more people could come as well. We didn't turn any people away – we would say it's going till 6 pm and we'd have people in line at 7:00, and we'd still make sure that they got a picture as well.”

For Anthony Vigliotta, a Timbers season ticket holder since 2012, the axe portraits capture the blossoming of a family steeped in Rose City culture. He proudly recalls how his son’s first match was the 100th all-time meeting between PTFC and their fierce Cascadia rivals Seattle Sounders FC, and marvels at how his usually mellow kids transform into boisterous ultras when the whistle blows at Providence Park.

“We even got a little video of my daughter screaming ‘gut the fish’ that has kind of become family lore,” he notes with a laugh of that Sounders game, always a showcase occasion in Goose Hollow.

When he and his wife posed back in 2015, their first child was still a toddler, just barely able to stand on her own, a splash of irresistible cuteness the club selected to display in the stadium. This year, she and her two siblings glare out defiantly from behind a gold-plated axe, while in solo shots she hefts Timber Joey’s chainsaw.

“Seeing the side by side of that was just – it was mind-bending,” Vigliotta told MLSsoccer.com. “It just goes so fast. And to see her looking more and more like her mom, and to see her going from that pudgy little-faced baby who, I don't know if you can tell by looking at it, but we're actually using the ax to pin her to us, because she couldn't stand super well at that age. She's kind of holding on like she would the railing of a crib, and we're using it to pin her to us for the photo.

“Now,” he added wistfully, “you're holding a full-fledged chainsaw.”

Player involvement

The portraits have always sought to center fans and their devotion to the club. Somewhere along the line, though, they became a prized ritual for long-serving players, too.

Thorns and Canadian women’s national team icon Christine Sinclair donned a Timbers third kit adorned with the name of legendary departed coach Clive Charles, whom she played for at the University of Portland. Diego Chara is a Timbers MLS original, the club’s first Designated Player and a part of every season since their expansion debut; it was only natural that he pose for axe portraits with his family in their adopted hometown.

“It's a great moment to share with the family,” said the Colombian midfielder, “and I think the feeling from the fans is amazing. They feel part of the team. I think that's crucial for the fans, the support they bring to the team. And particularly these axe photos, I mean, it’s something unique, now to see the kids, every time we take the photos, see the changes, the faces, how they grow up supporting the team.”

Mitchelldyer proudly notes that photo-shoot participants get time to find the expressions and angles they want. Everyone gets to flash a bit of personality in these shots, as you can tell from the Chara family shots, be it warm smiles for Chara’s daughters Mariajose and Allison or the fierce scowls that their twin brothers Diego and Ángel tried out.

“That day was really special for them,” said their father with a grin. “I think it was the second time for them. The first one they were little, and then now they are 6 years old, and they were in that face, like, game mode, you know?”

Chara readily admits that he didn’t know much about the Timbers’ history and culture when he first arrived, but it undoubtedly helped seal his decision to stick around all these years. Now 38, PTFC fans will hope he sticks around when his playing days are over, just as his former teammate Diego Valeri, the beloved playmaker who now works as an analyst on MLS Season Pass, did.

Portland is that kind of place, and Providence Park sits at the heart of it.

“Every single time I go, I never have a negative experience,” said Howard. “I feel like I can let my armor down when I go to Timbers, and Thorns, of course.

“Most sports, there's this kind of ‘bro’-like, aggro attitude sometimes, and it can be very intimidating, especially if you don't really fit the mold of whatever that is. And it's sad, because I love sports, and I always want to participate, even if I'm in the crowd. And so the Timbers is so welcoming, especially LGBTQ, but everybody – everybody is welcome there.”

The long haul

The axe portraits might not have been intended as a permanent fixture on the Timbers’ calendar, but Mitchelldyer expects to be taking those photographs for a long, long time to come.

“There's no other place like Portland in the league, and the fans are really like part of the club,” he said. “To the fans, the team is part of their family, and to the team, the fans are part of our family. So it goes both ways, where we're very intertwined and connected.

“We leave the pictures up on the stadium for five years. So if you're on the stadium, you're there until the next time we do this. So it's a pretty big deal for the people that are up there,” he added. “That's just one of those things that carries on from generation to generation.”