Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Accession Number DA15292
Collection type Photograph
Object type Black & white - Glass original half plate negative
Maker Darge Photographic Company
Place made Australia: Victoria, Melbourne, Broadmeadows
Date made c 2 October 1916
Conflict First World War, 1914-1918
Copyright

Item copyright: Copyright expired - public domain

Public Domain Mark This item is in the Public Domain

Description

Studio portrait of 5019 Private (Pte) Leslie Groves, 22nd Battalion (right) and an unidentified soldier. A labourer from Marungi, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Groves embarked with the 13th Reinforcements from Melbourne on HMAT Ayrshire on 3 July 1916. He was accompanied by his cousin and best friend, 5008 Pte Ernest Henry Fowles, 22nd Battalion also of Marungi, who enlisted at the same time and is pictured at DA15650A. The cousins were killed in action in France on 16 April 1917 seemingly at the same moment. Both their service records state the men were "buried in sunken road leading from Noreuil to Ecoust St Mein, Map 57 C.N.W. C9.A9.7" and they are commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial. 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.