“The Funeral of Joe Newton”: Selections of Photography by Nick Matsas
A project of lost American dreams from Elmhurst, Illinois to Oxford, Mississippi
by Katie Ingegneri
USA, 2017: A bleak year of shifting consciousness and an awareness of decline. Nick Matsas got in touch with me about a photography book project he did called “The Funeral of Joe Newton,” around the December 2017 death of the legendary Elmhurst, Illinois track coach of York Community High School. It was also a document of a road trip Nick did with his brother Ziggy who was ill. The trip was bookended by the death of Newton and Nick’s return to Illinois, and the two brothers visiting the grave of William Faulkner in Oxford, Mississippi. This piece contains my curation of some photos from the project with my impressions as Houseshow editor, Nick’s intro to the book including his brother Ziggy’s words, and selections from our conversation about the project.
When I look at Nick’s photos, I’m struck by the ubiquity of the modern American experience. These photos could be anywhere — most of them are not specifically indicative of Mississippi, or Illinois, or Washington, where Nick currently resides, or Massachusetts, where I’m from. The modern American landscape is one of universal experiences: The gas station. The Coca-Cola sign. The Christmas decorations. The addiction. The desolation. The garage door. The numbness. The crossroads. The cross. The tunnel. The tribute. You know you’ve seen it and felt it all before, out there, somewhere.
Familiarity. Disconnect.
2017 was a year of levels rising and a psychic crowding in everyone’s consciousness. There are too many people and yet it feels like there is no one.
There are no people in Nick’s photos except for Santa and Clark Gable…who I initially misremembered as Elvis.
This is an American landscape that is tense yet calm, blank yet comforting, with an aching for normalcy or an aching for something better. Make America Great Again? When was greatness lost? Was greatness to be found in winning the track meet, the inspiration now long gone on some fall afternoon? Is greatness only to be found in memory?
Nick’s photos are one of a past enhanced by memories of dead heroes and impressions of historic glory. Or a post-apocalyptic future where there is no one left. Perhaps it is the apocalyptic present.
— Katie Ingegneri
Introduction to “The Funeral of Joe Newton,” by Nick Matsas
I was born in Elmhurst, Illinois in 1988. I went to high school there in 2004 and graduated in 2007. I ran cross country for one season under legendary Coach Joe Newton. Was kicked off the team a week before the season ended for ditching practice to buy chocolate-covered donuts at a local convenience store. The convenience store no longer exists. Joe Newton died December 9th, 2017.
I arrived for the holidays December 19th, 2017 and took photos of everything I saw.
The day after Christmas my younger brother, Ziggy, suffered from vomiting and diarrhea. In an attempt to make him feel better we drove south to Mississippi to see a dead man he read about once.
After that, we drove back to Elmhurst and spent New Years watching our mother cry because her landlord killed our dog and threatened her boyfriend. The next morning Ziggy was scribblin’. This is what he wrote:
Solus hunc iuvare potes.
You alone can help this man.
At once I lifted my head, and when I saw the places, I tried to project myself, to try to inject myself into the grass but I felt vanity as my image proved superficial all along the way. I couldn’t picture a me and a Memphis, I read what Richard Wright wrote of the Mississippi Delta and that left a muted, brown stain on everything. I stood at the foot of the rubble of an Egyptian dynasty, I saw the buildings but I couldn’t see the people, not even ghosts; as though it was all there for no one, just to build, just to be built.
I had to go all the way to Oxford, MS just to taste the dirt in the water, and see a man drink a large glass and then I understood that these people come from the earth, they are the buildings with fractured foundations, they are the ruins and arsoned house frames and rusted-off paint and shredded wood doors and forever scattered glass.
Back home. Why does everything get old and die and pass away? Are we fools for buying into the chaos. When I look at a house or a place and tell a foreigner — it was different back then, things were better back then. What value is there in then? What does then matter? When I look at the track and hear Coach Newton, just one time, acknowledge me and to hear him say I have potential, I can only say to myself that I was there. Once upon a time I was there and I was fast and days past and years past and quietly, without notice, I left, then he left.
When the trees are bare, I imagine what they look like in the spring, in the summer; the image comes back effortlessly. What happened? No real answer but it comes back so instantly, as though Joe sings through me — All the Degos off the grass, ei i ei i ohhh.
We are all marching, sometimes in quickstep, sometimes lagging, toward death, and I’ll hang my shoes on the telephone wire.
Interview with Nick Matsas: Winter 2018
“So this project was a surprise. These photos, that are The Funeral of Joe Newton, did not have any conscious planning. In fact, when I took these photos in Elmhurst, IL and Mississippi from December 20th — January 2nd, I was looking forward to working on another project during that time. When I arrived in Elmhurst, by the second day I could visualize all 126 pages of The Funeral of Joe Newton. Something happened in me and took over my thoughts and I suspect this take over had been waiting for a while due to the fast nature of the take over and the fact that when I moved from Elmhurst at 18 I’ve thought about the town 3 times.
Until very recently I disliked Elmhurst to a hilarious degree. A favorite thing of mine to do while living in Elmhurst was spray paint “rocks suck” on the wall of the Elmhurst rock museum and spray paint “… suck” on coordinating establishments. This dislike of Elmhurst stems from the fact I was arrested every morning during my walk to school by the local pigs. They are squarely to blame for destroying my perception of this quiet Norman Rockwell painting…and that is precisely what Elmhurst is, a painting.
Not much changes in a painting except in time, it can crack, and you might come to like that painting. See it in a different light. So when I visited in December it was the first time I can recall liking what I saw.
Joe Newton was and is a Biblical/legendary figure in Elmhurst. He passed away December 9th and the town decided to stay indoors and mourn. I walked for hours and never saw a person. My brother (Ziggy) and I drove all the way to Faulkner’s grave in Mississippi looking for anyone and never saw a soul.
One of the reasons there are no people in the book is because when I looked around everyone seemed pretty ugly and genuinely there were no people outside. In short I made this book for my brother, to show him life was worth living, and if you put your mind to it you can do anything.
It seemed like death was everywhere and when I’m at a funeral its sort of how I feel. Joe Newton had just passed away and I thought making a book of his ‘funeral’ summed up everything pretty nicely.”
Katie Ingegneri: Why make the drive to Faulkner’s grave in Mississippi, given that it is just so far — geographically and culturally — from Elmhurst IL? Did you find more similarities or differences than you were expecting? What does Mississippi mean to you versus what Elmhurst means to you (and your brother in the foreword)?
Nick Matsas: It was the quietest place I could think of. Elmhurst and Oxford have nothing in common but once I got there I did find one thing similar, that being, no one was around. I don’t know if its like that all the time. We even thought about digging up Faulkner just to see if anyone would show up to stop us.
When I landed in Elmhurst for Christmas, my brother was sick and couldn’t rest around the family. So I drove him to a place where we have no family and he could rest in a Marriott hotel.
Was the trip more about Faulkner or more about Mississippi?
It was more about my brother, Ziggy. He loves classic literature and the blues. Which is why we stopped in Rosedale, MS cause we heard the blues there.
What did Joe Newton mean to you beyond getting kicked off the team? What did he mean to Elmhurst?
To Elmhurst he was/is a god and to me he was/is a preacher man. I just looked at the lyrics to Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man” and the lyrics are spot on what Joe Newton meant to me. He was very smart and was everywhere even when I wasn’t running he’d be in my math class whispering in my ear and the math teacher wouldn’t care.
Do you consider Elmhurst “home,” even though you moved there at 14 and live in Seattle now?
I wouldn’t consider Elmhurst home. I always feel like I’m on a different planet when visiting, but at the same time I feel like I know so much about it and have memories attached to certain street corners and fields. My grandma, 2 uncles, and my mom live there. I think my dad lives there. His dad, Papou we call him, lived there for 60+ years and just moved to the town over. I had sex for the first time on a slide in the park in the middle of town so maybe Elmhurst was like a bed I had sex in for 4 years.
Does the death of Joe Newton mark the end of an era that is more than just his role as track coach at York?
I think so. The type of person that is Joe Newton doesn’t get born anymore.
Does getting kicked off the team mean you felt any disconnect from the community mourning?
No. I never had a deep connection with the community. It didn’t really matter to me if I was on the team or not. I’m just glad I got to meet and talk to Joe Newton.
What is the role of nostalgia in this collection of photos and the foreword? Is nostalgia positive or negative? Or neither?
Oooooo nostalgia. I think memories are really good. Like really really good. And I like applying memories to the future. Future plans. I don’t know of a “better time.” Like I don’t think of the 90s as this time that was greater than now. Like a field in Colorado I walked across and had a pleasant experience is still there and if a McDonald’s gets built on it, then I can walk into that McDonald’s and meet some toothless wonder and start a friendship that will last our entire lives. 300 years ago, Chicago was a beautiful swamp. For the record though I do prefer to keep things green. We should stop building shit.
Nostalgia and this collection, I don’t know if there is any. My brother was sick and this is the document that no one was around but at the same time we had to leave cause he couldn’t rest there.
I also just thought Elmhurst looked great as soon as everyone was gone. Elmhurst without people is a very nice town.
Nick: This is not a book of visual cocktails. It’s shot in winter, when you feel the bone structure of a community and/or landscape. The loneliness of it. Something waits beneath the ground, the whole story doesn’t show. So it’s contemplative, silent, thoughtful was a word I thought of when I thought of your melancholy question earlier. I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming in the past and future. Suburbs are starting to get old, in the context of America, especially with modern life always speeding up. You think of a Trump poster on a brick wall that’s about to fall over. He represents speed (Twitter, his actions) not a lot of thought in him and that gets slapped on a 70-year-old brick wall. A lot of what I took photos of I did because of the timelessness I thought they emulated in my family’s life.
