Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Group portrait including 7451 Private (Pte) Wallace Moncrief Black (position unknown). An orchardist from Pakenham Upper, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Black embarked with the 25th Reinforcements, 5th Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Themistocles on 4 August 1917. Later serving in France, he returned to Australia on 13 July 1919. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had a 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.