Julian H. Fisher – 50th Reunion Essay

Julian H. Fisher

320 Dudley Street

Brookline, MA 02445

fisher@vzul.com

617-232-3411

Spouse(s): Barbara Wallraff (1992-2009)

Education: Yale BA 1969, Johns Hopkins MD 1973

Career: Harvard Medical School faculty (neurology) 1979-present

College: Morse

Bookends. That is how I view my life in relationship to Yale.

I came to Yale with a somewhat single-minded desire to pursue a career in medicine, but with a strong hobby interest in photography. My plans were upended as photojournalism at the Yale Daily News blossomed, occupying many of my free hours, with freelancing for national publications. Enhancing it were two semesters of one-to-one seminars with Walker Evans, the preeminent American documentary photographer. One bookend: photography. While there was real potential for a career at a national level, had I wanted it, the reality and specter of Vietnam with a low draft number led to a rethink. I dropped back and punted, to the safe and secure: medical school, with occasional regrets about the path not taken.

And so on through medical school, at Hopkins, a far cry in educational style from what Yale had been. More structured, less creative, a bit of a shock over multiple years and more regrets. Then a pediatric residency in Philadelphia, then a clinical year spent in Lima working in the midst of deprivation and malnutrition, followed by a shift to neurology, with further training in Toronto and Rochester. And then finally to Boston, for a Harvard faculty position that confirmed that Harvard is not all it is cracked up to be! But I stayed, moved to part-time, involved myself in entrepreneurial activities, started small tech companies, never became a Bill Gates, but learned and grew. And traveled all the while, whenever the opportunity arose, to many obscure corners of the world, some discovered, some under-discovered.

Somewhere in there was a marriage, to a magazine editor—I was tantalizingly close to journalism but not in it myself—that lasted a reasonable time but was unfortunately impermanent.

And then the other bookend. Casting about with my American studies background for something to do creatively alongside and beyond medicine, I took note of Occupy Wall Street as an emerging social movement highlighting income inequality. Back to photojournalism, to capture something invisible—struggle and stress—the American middle class responding to growing income inequality. And struggle it was for me as well, to create those metaphorical images. I envied Walker Evans, whose powerful pictures of sharecroppers in evident poverty, yet dignified, forced society to confront and condemn sharecropping, and I wondered if I could give as strong a face to income inequality that it might make a difference. Photographs emerged, with serendipity the photographs became an exhibit—at Yale. Full cycle.

I never left Yale—its intellectual stimulation persisted—and Yale never left me, challenging me to explore, learn, and grow, throughout the last half century. For that I am forever grateful.

It was there at the beginning to stimulate my imagination and creativity, to provide me with tools that proved useful for a half century… and then it was there to celebrate some of those achievements.