Igor Strojecki

Leon Barszczewski, a man of straightforward character and noble bearing, earned the respect of Indigenous populations with the trust and kindness he showed them. He was often the first European to reach the remote, wild, and mountainous regions he traversed. He documented local legends, folklore, and beliefs, while directing his camera lens at the faces and colourful attire of the people he encountered. His photographs preserved mountain landscapes, urban architecture, and everyday life scenes of the inhabitants of the areas he visited. Thanks to his glass negatives, we can now sense the presence of these distant peoples, and see how they lived and worked…

Leon Barszczewski was born on 20 February 1849, not, as previously believed, in Warsaw, but according to recently discovered documents, in the town of Smila, near Cherkasy, Ukraine. This branch of the Barszczewski family bore the Ślepowron coat of arms. They legitimized their noble status in the first half of the 19th century, and records show that they had been settled in the region for about 150 years.

Conscripted into the army as a punishment

Leon’s childhood unfolded in a family with strong patriotic traditions. He was one of eight children born to Szymon and Adelajda, née Nowicka. According to family recollections, the four eldest sons took part in the January Uprising, were exiled to Siberia, and lost all contact with their family. After the premature death of his parents, Leon, along with two younger brothers, was raised by his older sister. He was later placed under the guardianship of the Russian government and sent to the St. Vladimir Military Gymnasium in Kyiv. He graduated from the 2nd Constantine Infantry School in St. Petersburg, and later from the Odessa Junker School. During a history exam, provoked by a professor’s question regarding the “Polish rebellions”, he defended the insurgents. As a result, he was punished by being assigned to a frontline unit of the 14th Infantry Division, stationed at the time in the Odessa Military District. From that point on, like many men of his era, he tied his professional life to service in the Russian Imperial Army.

Initially, he served in the 55th Podolian Infantry Regiment in Bessarabia and the Kherson Governorate. In 1876, at his own request, he was transferred to the topographic unit of a battalion in Samarkand, where he remained until 1897. From there, he undertook numerous expeditions into territories of the former Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanates of Badakhshan and Darvaz. He studied transportation routes along the borders with China and Afghanistan and created precise maps of the regions he explored. From the border city of Termez on the Amu Darya River, he crossed into Afghanistan and mapped three different routes to Mazar-i-Sharif. Owing to his experience, he became a valued expedition companion for European travellers and scholars. During this period, his expedition partners included the French explorers Pierre Gabriel Bonvalot (1853–1933) and Jean Chaffanjon (1854–1913), the Ukrainian botanist Prof. Vladimir I. Lipsky (1863–1937), and the Russian anthropologist and ethnographer Prof. Ivan L. Yavorsky (1853–1920). Family accounts suggest that he planned a joint expedition with another Polish traveller in Russian service, General Bronisław Grąbczewski (1855–1926), but for unknown reasons this collaboration never came to fruition.

A Pioneer of Documentary Photography

As a man of straightforward nature, noble demeanour, and respectful attitude toward the locals, Leon Barszczewski earned their admiration and confidence. He was often the first European to reach the distant, wild, and mountainous territories he traversed. He recorded local legends, oral traditions, and beliefs, turning his camera toward the expressive faces and vivid costumes of the people he met. His photographs captured mountain vistas, city architecture, and scenes from the daily lives of the region’s inhabitants. Thanks to his glass plate negatives, today we can feel the human presence from those times and see how they lived and worked, even in agriculture. His lens immortalised genre scenes, portraits of men from different social strata, and several rare depictions of local women. Barszczewski can be regarded as a pioneer of Polish documentary photography. His work earned him gold medals at photographic exhibitions: first in Paris in 1895 for his images of Asian glaciers, and again in Warsaw in 1901 for his Eastern landscapes and genre scenes.

Leon Barszczewski meticulously documented the places he visited. His travel journals are rich with observations in the fields of natural science, botany, zoology, geography, and geology. During his expeditions, he discovered numerous deposits of metal ores and precious stones, including gold, diamonds, jade, and lapis lazuli. He conducted pioneering research on glaciers in the Zeravshan and Hisar mountain ranges, earning him a reputation as a distinguished glaciologist and the first Polish researcher of Central Asian glaciers. A glacier on the southern slope of the Hisar Range was named in his honour by Prof. Lipsky, and during a joint expedition in August 1896, the scholar also named a plant after him: the Allium barsczewskii Lipsky (Barszczewski’s Garlic). Barszczewski also conducted ethnographic and archaeological research, collecting botanical and zoological specimens, insects, and minerals. He was among the first to carry out archaeological work on the Afrasiab Hill – the site of ancient Samarkand. From the many artifacts he gathered on his travels, he established a private museum in his home. A significant part of his collection later became the foundation of the historical museum in Samarkand. The territories explored by Leon Barszczewski now lie primarily within the modern borders of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan but also extend into Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan.

From Glory to Tragedy

Leon Barszczewski’s scientific achievements were widely recognized, earning him membership in several scholarly societies, including the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, the Imperial Moscow Society of Naturalists, and the Imperial Russian Ichthyological, Geological, and Botanical Acclimatisation Societies. During his military service, he was decorated with numerous honours, among them the Orders of St. Vladimir (4th class), St. Stanislaus (2nd and 3rd class), St. Anna (3rd class), and the Bukhara Order of the Golden Star (3rd class).

Barszczewski’s family life was marked by both joyful and tragic events. In 1880, Irena Niedźwiecka (1863–1890) travelled to Samarkand to visit her brothers – participants in the January Uprising who had been exiled there. She soon became Leon’s wife. Together they had five children: Wiktoria (1881–1954, married name Szweryn), Jadwiga (1884–1966, married name Michałowska), Irena (1885–1938, married name Rudnicka), Anna (1887–1941, married name Strojecka), and Leonard (1889–1915). After Irena’s untimely death on November 27, 1890, their children were raised by their older cousin, Leontyna Szweryn (1864–1956), affectionately known in the family as “Aunt Lola”.

Following his voluntary retirement from service in Central Asia, Leon Barszczewski was transferred to the city of Siedlce. In 1904, he founded a Commercial School for Girls – today’s Queen Jadwiga II Secondary School. That same July, he was called to serve in the Russo–Japanese War, during which he spent nine months behind enemy front lines in Harbin. After retiring permanently in 1906, he travelled across Europe, visiting countries such as Belgium, France, and Switzerland. He died tragically on 22 March 1910, in Częstochowa. Since 1995, his remains have rested in the family grave, plot 12, in Warsaw’s historic Stare Powązki Cemetery.

A Unique Photographic Collection

The photographic collection Leon Barszczewski created between 1885 and 1909 is a rare treasure – perhaps the only collection of its kind to be found in this part of Europe. His images document the people and landscapes from his time in distant Central Asia, as well as scenes from Harbin during the Russo–Japanese War. The archive also includes photographs taken in and around Siedlce, where he spent his final years, and in Warsaw, featuring many shots of the Camaldolese church in the Bielański Forest. Unfortunately, many of the original annotations accompanying the photographs have been lost, making it difficult to determine the exact locations and dates of some of the images.

The bulk of the collection consists of photographs taken in Samarkand and throughout the former Emirate of Bukhara between roughly 1885 and 1897, as well as later images from his return visits after settling in Siedlce. It remains unclear exactly when Barszczewski began practising photography or when he acquired his first camera. Earlier studies relied heavily on the recollections of his daughter, Jadwiga, who believed he learnt photography from Ukrainian watercolourist Nikolai Osipov in around 1876. According to her account, Osipov taught Barszczewski to “look carefully and capture only what is beautiful or worth preserving”. This would have been during his early military service in Ukraine, before his time in Central Asia. However, modern research suggests that Barszczewski likely took up photography later, in the 1880s. Several dated glass plate negatives indicate that he was actively producing images by the early 1890s. The oldest known negative in his collection may be a portrait of his wife and daughters taken on their veranda in 1887, which possibly coincides with his purchase of a camera during a stay in St. Petersburg that same year. Another theory suggests that he was introduced to photography by French traveller and photographer Félix Tournachon “Nadar” (1820–1910) around the early 1890s (according to an account in the Bukhara album, published by Garnet, UK, 1993).

Barszczewski left behind no detailed records of the photographic techniques or equipment he used in Central Asia. However, we do know that in 1896, during one of his expeditions with Prof. Vladimir I. Lipsky (1863–1937), he produced as many as 150 photographs documenting the journey. This number, multiplied by the approximately twenty major expeditions he is believed to have undertaken, once led researchers to estimate that he might have produced around 3,000 photographs. Today, that number is considered overly optimistic. Lipsky’s 1902 publication Gornaya Bukhara provides some insight into their photographic tools, mentioning that he carried twelve dozen Ilford glass plates, Secco-film photographic rolls, and a Pocket Kodak camera. Only a few brief notes from Barszczewski himself regarding photographic processing, makeshift darkrooms, and prints can be found in his Russo–Japanese War journal (1904–1905). It is known that he initially used a box camera with glass plates measuring about 18 × 24.5 cm, later switching to cellulose film, most likely with a Pocket Kodak. The exact number of photographs he took is unknown, but current research suggests a total of just over 700 images. This collection remains the most extensive photographic documentation of Central Asian countries from the late 19th century held in Poland.

Igor Strojecki – great-grandson of Leon Barszczewski

All photographs are from the author’s private collection.
Subheadings supplied by the editorial staff.

Translated by Sylwia Szarejko.