Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 1929 Private (Pte) Walter William Kerr, 59th Battalion from Merrylands, NSW. He enlisted in the AIF on 17 January 1916 as a 26 year old and embarked for overseas with the 3rd Reinforcements from Melbourne on 4 May 1916 aboard HMAT Port Lincoln. After joining the 60th Battalion on 25 November 1916, he was killed in action near Bullecourt, France on 12 May 1917. Pte Kerr's name is inscribed on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, France with others who have no known grave. 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 1930's, 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.