Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 2270 Private (Pte) Arthur James Cohen, 22nd Battalion. A jockey from Caulfield, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Cohen embarked with the 4th Reinforcements from Melbourne on HMAT Hororata on 27 September 1915. After arriving in Egypt, he stowed away on a ship returning to Australia and was declared an illegal absentee. Later confessing to desertion, he was discharged on 27 April 1920. 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.