Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait possibly of 1357 Private (Pte) John Bell, labourer, of Prahran, Victoria. Pte Bell enlisted in the 29th Battalion on 23 July 1915 and embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Ascanius on 10 November 1915. The Battalion remained in the Suez Canal area training until 16 June 1916 when they embarked for France and the Western Front. Pte Bell was killed in action on 30 September 1918 near St Quentin in the Somme area, France, aged 25 years. 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.