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Exhibition spotlights Diggers in France

The Lost Diggers of Vignacourt are on their way.

The WA tour of the acclaimed exhibition of photographs of World War I Diggers in France has been revived after the original tour was scrapped last year when Federal funding was withdrawn.

Remember Me: the Lost Diggers of Vignacourt will begin its tour at the WA Museum in Perth on June 6 before going to Albany, Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Geraldton.

Many WWI Diggers visited Vignacourt, north-west of Paris, where French couple Louis and Antoinette Thuillier took their photographs to send home.

The Thuillier collection contained almost 4000 glass-plate negatives depicting Australian and other Allied soldiers and French civilians. The negatives were found in the attic of the Thuilliers' farmhouse in 2011.

More than 800 of the glass plates were bought by WA businessman Kerry Stokes and donated to the Australian War Memorial.

The AWM said this week that the WA exhibition had been developed with the support of Mr Stokes, the Seven Network, Seven Group Holdings and Wesfarmers.

AWM senior historian Peter Burness said the photos were a rare insight into the Australian soldiers of the time.

"There's nothing else like them," he said.

WA Museum chief executive Alec Coles said the exhibition explored the soldiers' personal stories and provided some understanding of their lives and what they had endured.

So far, 121 soldiers in the AWM's 800 images have been identified.

A selection of 80 hand-printed photographs from the collection will tour WA, including 10 of WA soldiers who have been identified, and another six images unique to the WA exhibition, featuring soldiers believed to be from WA.

Mr Coles said an important function of the exhibition was "to encourage people to help identify these unknown soldiers who had their photographs taken to send home . . . but never had their names recorded".

"It would be wonderful if visitors to our exhibition were able to make that, as yet, still to be dis- covered family connection," Mr Coles said.

The exhibition runs at the WA Museum in Perth from June 6 to August 30 before going to regional museums.

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