Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait probably of 4692 Private (Pte) James Fooke, 23rd Battalion. A labourer from Richmond, Vic prior to enlistment, Pte Fooke embarked with the 12th Reinforcements from Melbourne aboard HMAT Malwa on 26 April 1916. On 16 October 1917 he was killed in action at Passchendaele in Belgium, aged 30, and was buried in the Poelcappelle British Cemetery, Belgium. 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.