City chroniclers will enjoy the deep-dive into Mumbai from Foy Nissen’s observant lens
Foy Nissen. Pic/Facebook
This writer first came across Foy Nissen’s body of work while reading Gillian Tindall’s City of Gold many moons ago. His name also stands out in Suketu Mehta’s Over time, and as work demanded researched articles, his name kept cropping up in the acknowledgments section of countless books about Bombay/Mumbai. Curious to know more about the man behind the research, we discovered that the Indianised Dane had a key role to play in documenting the city; fellow researchers and writers who had the opportunity to interact with him would rave about his mammoth archive of books and writings, including his own on the city’s heritage, history and architecture. By 2010, he took ill, and could not move around the city as much as he would have liked to. He was known to head out on his Vespa, with a camera around his neck, to a new part of the city each time. Often, the pillion rider would be a historian or photographer. His black and white frames are a timeless tribute to the original craft of photography; children and people looking out of windows were some of his favourite subjects. He would take enthusiasts on walks as part of the Bombay Local History Society.
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After his passing in 2018, some of his caretakers organised an exhibition at Chhatrapati Shivaji Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) in March 2019 that inlcude 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. When we recently stumbled upon the website, it made for a warm, almos personal tribute to the man who shared a beautiful connect with this city. Check it out and it might make you fall in love with Bombay/Mumbai, all over again.
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