Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 711 Private (Pte) Alex Archer. A labourer from Castlemaine, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Archer embarked with the 13th Reinforcements, 4th Machine Gun Company from Melbourne on HMAT Suevic on 21 June 1917. Later transferring to the 39th Battalion and then to the 57 Battalion, he was killed in action on 27 February 1918, aged 19, and was buried in the La Plus Douve Farm Cemetery, Belgium. 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.