Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 4243 Private (Pte) Albert Edward Lester, 14th Battalion. A grocer from Jeparit, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Lester embarked with the 13th Reinforcements from Melbourne on HMAT Demosthenes on 29 December 1915. On 11 April 1917, aged 22, he was killed in action near Bullecourt, France. Having no known grave, he is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial. 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 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.