Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 1797 Private (Pte) Frank Leslie Bell, 2nd Reinforcements, 29th Battalion, of Armidale, NSW. Pte Bell enlisted on 13 July 1915 and embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Demosthenes on 29 October 1915. He later served as a lance corporal. He was killed in action on 11 April 1917 at Bullecourt, France, whilst serving with the 14th Battalion.
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.