Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 2556 Private (Pte) John Leslie Cossar, 57th Battalion. A farmer from Winchelsea, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Cossar embarked with the 5th Reinforcements from Melbourne on HMAT Shropshire on 25 September 1916. He was later killed in action on 12 May 1917 at Bullecourt, France, aged 21 and, having no known grave, 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 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.