Mid-Day Opinion: Foy saw both Bombay and Mumbai

Prince of Wales (the original Kala Ghoda), 1980s. PICS COURTESY/FOY NISSEN’S BOMBAY: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE ARCHIVE OF FOY NISSEN, JNAF

I first came across Foy Nissen's body of work, over two decades ago, while reading Gillian Tindall's City of Gold. Suketu Mehta had acknowledged him in his eponymous ode, Maximum City. I spotted snatches of the Dane's priceless photography as well. Over time, and because of my continued research and interest in the city's heritage, his name kept popping
up across publications and periodicals, as well as in conversations with members of the heritage community. He had an aura. His envious archive of photos, silent dedication to his craft and his long-drawn love affair for a city he made his home, made for a fascinating storyline.

I began to understand the gravitas of his contribution as tracking the heritage beat took me deeper into the lives of some of its earliest and most dedicated guardians and chroniclers. Unfortunately, I never got the opportunity to meet him, because by the time my writing got me closer to his work, illness kept him confined to his home. It was in his passing in 2018, and the aftermath, when a tribute to his photography was planned at Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation (JNAF), at Chhatrapati Shivaji Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) in 2019, that I got my moment to enter his world, through his caretakers, Mona and Manju Mehra, his neighbours at Olympus Apartments on Altamont Road.

Foy Nissen from his college days at Cambridge, England

So, why are we rewinding our watch to celebrate this Danish gentleman, readers might still wonder?

Foy Nissen was born in Pune in 1931, and came to (then) Bombay to school at the Cathedral & John Connon School in Bombay. His great-grandfather, Georg Christian Kastrup Nissen, left Denmark to seek employment in England; however a strange twist of fate saw him on a vessel sailing for Bombay, where he arrived in March 1859. Since then, Nissen senior's descendants made India their home. He studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, England and later, worked at the British Council in Bombay in the 1970s, when his curiosity for the city exploded onto a greater canvas that we are grateful for, till this day.

The celebrated historian had an envious collection of books and a massive repository of photographs. I was delighted to finally get ‘the tour' of some of his works when the gracious Mehra sisters invited me to their home for a dekko of their re-released coffee table photo book, Foy Nissen: The quiet genius in 2019. My first glance at a black and white photo of the younger Nissen on the book jacket caught my eye. "That's Foy from his Cambridge days; so dashing…like a Hollywood star!" Manju chuckled, as we nodded in agreement.

From them I learnt of how he would head out on his Vespa, with a camera around his neck, to a new part of the city. Often, the pillion rider would be a historian or a photographer. I also discovered that British artist Howard Hodgkin, and historians and academics Gillian Tindall and Christopher London, had all benefitted from Nissen's scooter rides.

I noticed a separate section was dedicated to Banganga. Turns out, he was wowed by the heritage neighbourhood and ancient water body. Children and window frames were two other subjects that caught his fancy. But it was the common man that mattered the most.

What emerged during that hour-long chat with the Mehra sisters was how he patiently guided, helped and shared his time and input with several scholars and young researchers. This was how they knew of the Danish chronicler who mostly kept to himself, even as he continued to nurture his fondness for the city. I also learnt that he was one of the pioneers of charting guided walks in the city. The meticulous detailing of his hand-drawn maps with notes continues to inspire heritage trail developers like yours truly.

After his passing in 2018, the Mehra sisters, a few of his mentees and well-wishers, had organised an exhibition at CSMVS in March 2019 that included a selection of his black-and-white photographs as well as his prized cameras. A coffee table book and a website were initiated in his memory.

We'll never have another like Foy. How wonderful it would be if a city-based cultural or heritage platform or any of its museums were to permanently showcase his work, along with contributions of the many non-Mumbaikars who made this city their home, and documented it with the love that was less outsider and more insider!

mid-day's Features Editor Fiona Fernandez relishes the city's sights, sounds, smells and stones...wherever the ink and the inclination takes her. She tweets @bombayana
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.