Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3676 Private (Pte) Arthur Henry Mason. A commercial traveller from Malvern, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Mason embarked with the 8th Reinforcements, 23rd Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Afric on 5 January 1916. Later transferring to the 8th Battalion he was killed in action at Pozieres, aged 21, on 26 July 1916 and was buried in the vicinity. His grave could not be subsequently located and he is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, France. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had a permit 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.