Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 1891 Private (Pte) Theophile Antoine Blanchard, 2nd Reinforcements, 29th Battalion, of Warracknabeal, Vic. Pte Blanchard enlisted on 3 August 1915 and embarked aboard HMAT Demosthenes on 29 December 1915. On 9 August 1916, while serving with the 14th Battalion, he was killed in action at Mouquet Farm in the Pozieres area of 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 unit name, for each negative.