Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 2659 Private (Pte) Benjamin Alfred Freestone, 6th Reinforcements, 21st Battalion, of Bendigo, aged 33 years. Pte Freestone enlisted on 16 July 1915 and embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Moldavia on 5 October 1915. He was killed in action on 7 November 1916 in France. His brother-in-law, 3867 Sergeant Arthur Strahan MM, A Company, 57th Battalion, was killed in action on 20 July 1916. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had the concession to take photographs at the Broadmeadows and Seymour army camps during the First World War. In the 1930s, the Australian War Memorial purchased the original glass negatives from Algernon Darge, along with the photographers' notebooks. The notebooks contain brief details, usually a surname or unit name, for each negative.