Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3469 Private Leslie Ridge (John Leslie George Ridge), 14th Battalion of Boat Harbour, Tasmania. A bush labourer prior to enlistment, Pte Ridge embarked with the 11th Reinforcements on HMAT Nestor on 11 October 1915. In November 1916 he was promoted to the rank of Corporal, then to Sergeant three months later. On 11 April 1917 he was killed in action at Bullecourt, France. 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 a unit name, for each negative.