Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 4141 Sapper (Spr) Alfred James Fitzgerald, No.5 Tunnelling Company. A labourer from Port Augusta, SA prior to enlistment, Spr Fitzgerald embarked from Melbourne on HMAT Warilda on 25 May 1916. Later transferring to No.2 Tunnelling Company, he was reported to be missing in action and believed to have been captured and was being held as a prisoner of war. Subsequent investigations showed that this was not the case and that he had been killed in a dugout on 10 July 1917. Having no known grave he is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, 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.