Ben Rayner’s Mud, Sweat & Tears is a photographic tribute to long distance running

New York-based photographer Ben Rayner’s work may live in between documentary and advertising, but in Mud, Sweat & Tears – a 58-page zine documenting the 2025 Nike Cross Nationals (NXN), America’s premier high school cross country championship – he’s capturing the types of people who are usually blurs that whizz past cameras. From all over America, teenagers come to NXN to experience the track-star treatment – pre-race nerves, mud everywhere, sweat rolling into eyes. But in Ben’s zine, it feels a lot more like a school sports day: down-to-earth and for fun, even if these runners are serious athletes.

Published with Good Sports, the zine is an invigorating mix of things: bright photography, writing with Paul Snyder, colour-blocked graphic design (which “echoes the uniform that the kids wear”) – not to mention the interesting subject matter, a collection of very possibly future Olympians, 400 athletes who Ben says “come to Portland, give everything and go home without a trophy”. Inspired by running magazines from the 70s, the project was shot on film to achieve the warmth of Ben’s own early running days (which he wishes he started even earlier) and the retro-charm of vintage running aesthetics.

Mud, Sweat & Tears features a mix of black-and-white and colour shots – swarms of bare legs, mud between toes, crying, exhaustion and embraces. The photos are intimate and alive, helped by film grain and contact sheets that give the vibe of a photographer’s journal. But most of all, it’s the colours of all of the bare skin in the zine that makes you feel the heavy pulse and blood running. These are people who find joy in pushing the body to the limits – and this zine shows you the bodies that can operate at such a high athletic level. Running, at this stage, is a “team sport disguised as an individual one”, says Ben. And those individual traits shine in the glitter face paint and sheer determination to rise above the pack.

It’s a bit of a throwback to Ben’s music documentary days as well as his current portrait photography which features celebrities such as Finn Wolfhard, rapper YG, indie rock legend J. Mascis and comedian Bowen Yang. In Mud, Sweat & Tears, he’s tasked with finding the larger personalities in a crowd of fresh faces. It’s perhaps why Ben’s work can laser focus on moments of drama, emotion and action so well.