IDNO

N.102179.MF

Description

Full-length frontal view of Mrs. Sonia Fortes (Meyer Fortes’ wife) wearing a European style dress. In the background are trees and vegetation.

Place

W Africa; Ghana; Upper East Region [Gold Coast; Northern Territories]

Cultural Affliation

Tallensi

Named Person

Mrs Sonia Fortes (nee Donen)

Photographer

?Fortes, Meyer

Collector / Expedition

Fortes, Meyer

Date

?June - ?July 1934

Collection Name

Fortes Collection

Source

Drucker-Brown, Susan

Format

Glass Negative Halfplate

Primary Documentation

Other Information

N.102167.MF - N.102179.MF were kept in the box now numbered C550/.

Context: “On leaving South Africa two major goals beckoned. One was the desire to “make my mark on London.” The other was to marry Sonia Donen. Meyer had met Sonia by 1926, probably through her younger brother a the university in Cape Town. She was a few years his elder and in 1926 her family had only recently arrived in South Africa from Russia where she had been a Young Komsomol member and had had a Soviet upbringing. Like Nathan Fortes, her father had escaped Russia to avoid the draft but he had left behind a wife and four children. Separated by World War I and the Russian revolution, the family lost touch with him for nine years, during which time they were kept alive by Sonia’s mother, who fed the family by moving from farm to farm with a knitting machine, making woolens for the farmers. After the revolution Sonia’s elder sister, then 21, left Russia to trace her father, finding him in South Africa where the family were finally reunited.
In the late 1930s Sonia accompanied Meyer to the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (Northern Ghana) (see figure 2). Her early experience of survival in harsh living conditions may have given her the confidence needed to submit to the perils of anthropological fieldwork and to embark on what might well have seemed an imprudent marriage. On the other hand, the letter Myer wrote to Sonia Donen between 1926 and 1928 (Fortes 1926 - 28) reveal an exceedingly determined young man. Obstacles to their marriage, such as his youth, his extreme poverty, the vast distance between them, and her deep attachment to her family, pale beside his immense conviction that they must marry. The torrent of persuasion in his letters is so overwhelming that one is hardly amazed when a year after his departure, Sonia did indeed make the journey to England to join him.
The letters from London show his enthusiasm for the intellectual life around him, and his amazement at the densely populated, tube-transported city. He was observant and shrewd.”
(Drucker-Brown, S., ‘Notes toward a Biography of Meyer Fortes’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 16, No. 2 (May, 1989), pp. 375 - 385.). [ED 18/3/2008]

Bibliographical Reference: Fortes, Meyer, 1945. Dynamics of Clanship Among the Tallensi (London: Oxford University Press).

Bibliographical Reference: Fortes, Meyer, 1949. The Web of Kinship Among the Tallensi (London: Oxford University Press).

Bibliographical Reference: Fortes, Meyer, 1987. Religion, Morality and the Person: Essays on Tallensi Religion (London: Oxford University Press).

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Elisabeth Deane 18/3/2008] [Alicia Fentiman, 29/4/2008]