Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 2919 Private (Pte) Alan Ferguson (or Fergusson), 7th Battalion. A labourer from West Melbourne, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Ferguson embarked with the 9th Reinforcements from Melbourne on HMAT Star of Victoria on 10 September 1915. For reasons not stated, he failed to embark when the ship left Fremantle. He later re-embarked with the 12th Reinforcements, 16th Battalion from Fremantle on HMAT Ajana and with the service number 4050 on 22 December 1915. On 11 August 1916 he was killed in action in France and, having no known grave, is 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.