Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 7517 Private (Pte) Richard Johns, 14th Battalion. Pte Johns was a labourer from Port Lincoln, South Australia, prior to enlistment and he embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Nestor on 30 October 1917 for Suez, Egypt en route to England. He joined his battalion on the Western Front, France in May 1918. On 4 July 1918 he was wounded in action and was subsequently evacuated to England for treatment and recuperation before returning to Melbourne for discharge on 14 March 1919. 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.