Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 4523 Private (Pte) Frederick Henry Hughes. A miner from Berringa via Ballarat, Victoria, Pte Hughes embarked with the 14th Reinforcements, 8th Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Themistocles on 28 January 1916. Later transferring to the 58th Battalion he was killed in action on 27 September 1917 and buried in the vicinity of Polygon Wood near where he fell. Following the Armistice his remains could not be recovered and he is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Belgium. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had a 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.