A few weeks earlier, the historic Durbar Hall was the venue for a special panel discussion organised by the Mumbai Research Centre of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai. It was Foy Nissen’s death anniversary, and the idea was to have a reflective conversation honouring his invaluable contributions in context to the city’s layered histories and heritage. Three distinguished voices from Mumbai’s heritage community, Justice (retired) Gautam Patel, conservation architect Vikas Dilawari and physician and photographer, Dr Jehangir Sorabjee, were invited to share their views of Nissen’s overarching impact on our collective urban conscience.

For the uninitiated, Nissen made the city his home, and played a significant role in documenting it visually, as a photographer, as well as historically, as a chronicler of sites and buildings of Mumbai, or Bombay, as it was called then. I first came across 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. His Olympus Apartment residence on Altamount Road was home to a mammoth archive dedicated to the city’s heritage, history and architecture. Students, academics, including visiting researchers and historians, would frequent his home. It was also a salon where great minds would discuss all things heritage and culture in the city. How wonderful to have been a fly on the wall during such conversations!

Close friends and neighbours recall his wanderings on his Vespa, with a camera swung around his neck, in the quest of a new find, buried somewhere in the original city. Often, the pillion rider would be a historian or photographer. His black and white frames are a timeless tribute to the original art 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.