Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Outdoor group portrait of six soldiers from 7 Tent, 8th Battalion. Included in the group is 5213 Private (Pte) Alfred John Rowsell from Ballarat, Victoria (position not known). A 20 year old bricklayer prior to enlisting on 25 January 1916, Pte Rowsell embarked for overseas with the 16th Reinforcements of the 8th Battalion from Melbourne on 1 April 1916 aboard HMAT Suffolk. He was killed in action on 4 October 1917 at Anzac Ridge, near Zonnebeke, Belgium and is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Belgium 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 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. The names are transcribed as they appear in the notebooks.