Photo Essay Foy Nissen's Bombay

A recent exhibition brought together over fifty years of work by Foy Nissen, a lensmen of Danish descent who combined a keen sensibility with a quiet discipline. While he largely chronicled sights and monuments in Bombay, he also travelled to many parts of the country and beyond, from Goa and Madhya Pradesh to Rajasthan, Sikkim and Nepal

- Kaiwan Mehta

“For me, there is no such thing as the definitive photograph. The very act of fixing an image in a split-shutter-second suggests the dialogue that may ensue… Does the subsequent viewer see it this way? Or have I missed something vital and telling.” — Foy Nissen, A Solitary Moment: The Other India Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1982

An extraordinary archive of photographs was available to the people of Mumbai with the exhibition Foy Nissen’s Bombay opening in March this year at the Jehangir Nicholson Gallery, CSMVS. Curated by Kamini Sawhney, the show represented over fifty years of work by a lensmen who combined a keen sensibility with a quiet discipline. Foy Nissen photographed people, festivals, places and monuments and his images of the city are invaluable to the preservation of Mumbai’s heritage.

It was the 1990s that saw Mumbai’s heritage movement find its voice. But Nissen was way ahead of it, photographing and documenting his beloved city bit by bit, starting way back in the 1960s. He wandered the streets of Fort detailing its combination of Neo-Gothic and Art Deco buildings. He worked his way through the bowels of Crawford market and Bhendi Bazaar recording every carved cornice and fountain, and then into Bhuleshwar and Girgaum capturing the quaint homes of Khotachiwadi.... all the way up to Bandra with its winding streets and colonial bungalows. His meticulous work provided the base for Mumbai’s first heritage list which then helped develop legislation to preserve the city’s heritage precincts.