Raise the Hammer
(Return to Authors)
The advent of wireless communications has made it possible for Mark to hold down a day job while spending quantity time out beyond the limits of something approaching a general conscensus about what's important in post-industrial society. In addition to working as a product demonstrator at Sobeys, Mark has worked as an ID photographer for a community college, a Kelly Girl, a Legal and Consumer Counsellor for an Auto Club, a Hall Director for a Southern Ontario University Residence, and an Aviation Analyst. He is the co-author of a television pilot called Bad Hall Director, which is unproduced but was once (and for all he knows may still be) seriously considered by serious producers, and he is the sole author of the e-novel of the same title on which it is based, and which must still exist on a CD at the bottom of a bottom drawer of his desk. He makes his home in Hamilton, Ontario.
Email: mark@interlynx.net
Sanatorium and Sanatorium: A Winter Collage - The setting of the Hamilton Sanatorium satisfies the early 20th century medical belief that high altitude and positioning on a slope contribute to the best conditions for consumptive patients. Published April 20, 2013 in Photo Essay
The Deconstruction of Crestwood School - Think about it: tools used for building are depicted on the side of a building that's being destroyed. Published January 03, 2013 in Photo Essay
Way Side, or The Tao of Lunch - Nietzsche lived in a world where you could expect to meet the enemy face to face. You weren't worrying about the surveillance cameras on your back. Published September 28, 2012 in Photo Essay
Thoughts on Thoughts About Persons from Porlock - Is this that bizarre North American directive where we're ordered to do something that only makes sense as a personal reflex of spontaneous happiness? Published June 05, 2012 in Photo Essay
BradI Ching: A Photo Journey to the End of my Driveway and Back Again - Are we all guilty of pursuing the horizon? Of pursuing an end that is but a beginning the moment we reach it? Published January 26, 2012 in Photo Essay
The Sadness of Pencils: Art, Ethics, and a Recipe for Baba Ghanoush - Including a shout-out to Paul Gauguin for abandoning his wife and five children for a hedonistic and selfish existence on the backs (literally) of poor uneducated Tahitian women. Published November 11, 2011 in Photo Essay
Deaths in Venice: A Centenary Tourist Experience - All holidays are fabrications. The fact of moving through a place we won't remain in means we don't put down foundations, but instead invent brief possible selves that we never become. Published July 10, 2011 in Photo Essay
Odradek for the 21st Century - Odradek shows up in the strangest places, when least expected. Published April 04, 2011 in Photo Essay
Erasure 1953-2011: A Journey To Extinction - I've been haunted by the idea of walking though urban streets, looking for a perfect eraser. I will not live forever. Carpe diem. Published January 30, 2011 in Photo Essay
A Shortcut From Dundurn To Frid That Readers Are Strongly Advised Not To Take - Mark resolved to travel from The First Unitarian Church of Hamilton to Soccer World, on foot, as directly as the crow flies, and to hell with any obstacles between the two. Published December 18, 2010 in Photo Essay
Ottawa, Summer 2010 (in a Convex Mirror) - If you can't imagine a purposeless walk from one strip mall to another being beautiful, spend two hours in the Diefenbunker. Published October 01, 2010 in Photo Essay
Album Review: Treats, by Sleigh Bells - Certain albums take a genre we know well and morph it into the thing we suddenly realized we always wanted it to be. Treats is such an album. Published May 17, 2010 in Reviews
March Break in Saskatchewan - Items discussed: public space, triangles, deep ruts, grandmothers, synthetic frogs, creepy ways to hang not particularly creepy pictures, and ruminations on the Christian drama. Published April 07, 2010 in Photo Essay
Kay Drage Park and the Origins of Written Language - As I advance into old age I suspect I'll retreat ever deeper into solitude. To this end I will write in my own language, in my own alphabet, and produce photo essays comprehensible to no one but myself. Published February 01, 2010 in Photo Essay
The Sunday Peninudes at Valens Conservation Area - Given the mid-to-late 20th Century beach culture that was instilled in me, it is hardly surprising that by my mid-teens I had completely eradicated the beach from my life. Published October 06, 2009 in Photo Essay
Things to Do in Hamilton When You're Unemployed - Strange to think of a place like this just being occupied by dead people. It could never happen in Toronto. A century crypt like this is just too tantalizing as real estate. You could sublet it in a heartbeat. Published August 06, 2009 in Photo Essay
Fractured Giraffe, or The Shards of Post-Industrial Life - A great source for the random detritus of urban life is the varied scraps of paper readers grab impulsively for bookmarks, which the books can inadvertently preserve for decades. Published June 05, 2009 in Photo Essay
Left Turn at Albuquerque - Whether I'm going to the moon or out to buy shoe-laces, the anxiety I accumulate between waking and finally steeling myself up but to put both feet on the floor next to the bed is always more than double the anxiety of any other journey in my day. Published April 28, 2009 in Photo Essay
The Ballad of Mountain Garage - Two busspottings a day was not difficult, even without really trying. Published March 14, 2009 in Photo Essay
The Other Mark Fenton - An Examination of Love, Death, the Pursuit of Happiness, the Ineffable Construct of the Self, and Undelivered Mail. Published February 11, 2009 in Photo Essay
The Vortex: A Fable of Espionage and Betrayal - A short story by Mark Fenton. Published January 08, 2009 in Fiction
RATDROP: An Exploration of Altitude, Liberty and the Inevitable Heaviness of Being - It's a constitutional right to own a jet that exceeds the sound barrier, burns a fantastic amount of fuel for what can only be short range flights, has no significant space for luggage, and can be fitted for weapons of mass destruction. Published November 26, 2008 in Photo Essay
Lost Word, Lost Image: Photo Tour of a Sentence - All literature is about loss, and Malcolm Lowry and Proust are each exceptional in their hourly agonizing over, and meticulous accounting of loss. Published November 04, 2008 in Photo Essay
The Fly: A Consideration of Animal Rights, Landscape Sketches, and Mortality - I didn't free the fly. I didn't terminate the fly. I walked away. How would a Jain judge me? How would William Stafford? How would The Cramps? Published October 02, 2008 in Photo Essay
The Bardo of the Canadian Prairies: Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg (with a new translation by Jeffrey Stewart) - We are allowed five minutes exactly. We must not wander from the bus and we are told: "You may not cross the street because if you are hit by a car you will probably be injured and I will be fired." Published September 11, 2008 in Photo Essay
Waiting for Denis Johnson - That's what we want from art: something that penetrates the material body, passes through it and into our mind. Published July 07, 2008 in Photo Essay
The Yurts of Bronte Park, or: The Possibility of Camping on the 403 - Easy to Mapquest, and aside from being stuck-on-a-site-with-a-pole, it should end the griping about how all the good sites were already taken. A campground on the 403. You heard it here first. Published June 05, 2008 in Photo Essay
The Diving Bell and the Melting Paraiso: Two Reviews and a Bridge - Cerebral misadventure meets cerebral faux-krautrock. Published April 30, 2008 in Reviews
Eaton Centre Parkade: Parking Garage or Lifestyle Choice? - Whenever I turn down a street I've been away from for a while I'm presented with something in ruins. Published March 24, 2008 in Photo Essay
Shadows: A Walking Tour of Mount Hope - I'm waiting for the phone to ring for having taken these pictures earlier this afternoon, as citizens of Mount Hope describe my suspicious activities to the authorities. Published February 14, 2008 in Photo Essay
The Enigma of Cats, or A Cautionary Tale About Electricity - In my dream I see the Sphinx fading up mysteriously onto the screen of my darkened Blackberry. And we talk. Published January 18, 2008 in Photo Essay
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Christ the King Cathedral - Such is the human spirit that it overreaches itself. Published December 20, 2007 in Photo Essay
Orpheus in Burlington - It does not pay to look back. Except sometimes it does. Published November 27, 2007 in Photo Essay
Ottawa Street: Way Too Close to Hallowe'en For Comfort - Ottawa Street is to fabric shopping as West 47 Street, New York, NY is to diamond shopping. Published November 08, 2007 in Photo Essay
Hammer Walk-Up (Part 1) - A Guided Tour Of East Mohawk With Two Mini-Dramas, A Consideration Of The War Of 1812, And An Unexpected Bunch Of References To Islamic Textiles Published October 22, 2007 in Photo Essay
Hammer Walk-Up (Part 2) - A Guided Tour Of East Mohawk With Two Mini-Dramas, A Consideration Of The War Of 1812, And An Unexpected Bunch Of References To Islamic Textiles Published October 22, 2007 in Photo Essay
Fisk the Amanuensis - A short story by Mark Fenton. Published September 09, 2007 in Fiction
The Narrow Road to Rymal and Nebo - A travelogue with some new poetry by Jeffrey Stewart in it. Published June 27, 2007 in Photo Essay
Charles Ives, Symphony No. 4 - There is in Ives' music a man who holds sacred all the values of the Union, and at the same time a man who wants to subvert it all. Published June 07, 2007 in Reviews
Adventures In Har[dw]are - What do B. Kliban, Lewis Caroll, Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Wittgenstein, and Harare, Zimbabwe have in common? Published May 18, 2007 in Photo Essay
Possibility for a Camera Obscura and Garth and Stonechurch - Mark sees through a glass, darkly. Published April 30, 2007 in Photo Essay
How I Wrote "How I Wrote 'Fisk'" - If you like movies about how movies are made, you'll love this story about how a story was made. Published March 19, 2007 in Photo Essay
Fisk - A short story by Mark Fenton. Published February 26, 2007 in Fiction and Poetry
Ancaster [Business Park]: An exploration in three mini-dramas, two snacks and a graveyard - We owe it to ourselves to walk (in stages, not necessarily consecutively) the entire route from home to the places we travel routinely. Published January 24, 2007 in Photo Essay
Fisk and Me: A Christmas Tale - An unlikely Christmas story of loss and redemption. Published December 13, 2006 in Fiction
The Roof Warrior - A stark figure zaprudered on the roof of a church spawns a genre-busting, apocalyptic literary thriller. Published November 23, 2006 in Photo Essay
Ped Versus Pod - If you are in a lobby, you'd rather be somewhere else, or have no place to go, or have reached a psychic limit and have found a momentary sanctuary midway through life's journey. Published October 06, 2006 in Photo Essay
Appleby Line and Highway 5 - Cars as well as houses are what we shut ourselves in to avoid the terror of the crowd. Published July 05, 2006 in Photo Essay
From Centre Mall to the Fringe - Can a photo essayist and a documentary filmmaker find each other if there's no Tim Horton's to guide them? Published June 16, 2006 in Photo Essay
A Lot in an Empty Lot - Mark tours an overlooked empty lot near the otherwise-bustling corner of Upper James and Rymal, and survives to tell the tale. Published May 26, 2006 in Photo Essay
Jackson Square Rooftop - I fell in love with the Jackson Square Rooftop shortly after I moved to Hamilton. There's so nothing like this in Edmonton. Published May 05, 2006 in Photo Tour
Meadowlands Power Centre: A Photographic Odyssey - Mark Fenton dares the impossible and discovers serendipity in a pedestrian walkway. Published April 21, 2006 in Photo Tour
The Amen Bookjacket, Published January 15, 2013 in Reviews
Real Sad He's Gone: A Response to the Death of David Foster Wallace, Published September 18, 2008 in Reviews
A Response to '#$&% Jackson Pollock', Published October 05, 2007 in Arts