This striking image is a portrait of Marek Ptasiński, a 41-year-old Polish peasant from the village of Ptaki, located near Starogród. The photograph was taken in the summer of 1856 by Marcin Olszyński, a 27-year-old budding photographer from Warsaw. It was captured as a salted paper print created from a glass collodion negative.
Olszyński visited the rural estate of the Horodyński family in Starogród, where he photographed local village life and its residents. He approached his subjects with a painterly, realist aesthetic, seeking to capture an authentic, unvarnished look at rural society rather than staging an idealized scene.
At the time this photo was taken, Marek Ptasiński lived under the system of serfdom (chłop pańszczyźniany), which legally tied peasants to the land owned by nobles. Serfdom was not officially abolished in this region of Poland until the emancipation reform of 1864.
Today, this rare photograph is preserved in the collections of the Museum of Warsaw (Muzeum Warszawy), where it serves as an important visual document of 19th-century European social history.
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