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Fotografia czarno-biała przedstawiająca portret Anny Pustowójtówny. Kobieta siedzi na krześle. Jest ubrana w długą suknię z ciężkiej tkaniny z haftowanym kołnierzykiem. Włosy ma spięte do tyłu w elegancką fryzurę. Na piersiach ma krzyż. Ręce trzyma na oparciu krzesła. Obok ilustracji znajduje się nagranie audio abstraktu.

Anna Henryka Pustowójtówna was born in 1838 (or 1843 according to other sources). She was a daughter of Marianna from the Kossak family and a Russian officer of Hungarian origin - Teofil Pustaya. Her patriotic views were most influenced by her grandmother, Brygida Kossakowska. In 1861, Pustowójtówna joined the patriotic demonstrations in Lublin, because of which she sentenced to closure in a Russian Orthodox monastery. In order to delay her exile, the girl simulated a disease, and her grandmother delayed her granddaughter's departure. When she was kept under house arrest in Zhytomyr, she managed to escape with the help of her friends. Dressed up as a boy, with short hair and wearing a junior high school uniform, she took shelter in Michalen, Romanian Moldavia. She was hosted by Zygmunt Miłkowski, who supported Polish refugees and conspirators.

After the outbreak of the January Uprising, Pustowojtówna, together with other volunteers, moved to the Russian Partition. On February 14, 1863, wearing a male costume and under the pseudonym of Michał Smok, she volunteered to join the unit of General Marian Langiewicz in Staszów. She took part in the battles near Małogoszcz, Pieskowa Skała, Chroberz and Grochowiska. The accounts of people living in her times show that she proved great courage. She was the adjutant of Langiewicz, she also often took care of the supply of the unit and was a Russian translator. On March 19, 183, she was arrested together with Langiewicz, while crossing the border. They were recognized despite the use of false documents. Soon, after she made a promise that she would not return to armed struggle, Henryka Pustowójtówna regained her freedom. She went to Prague and then to Paris. She was already a legendary figure. Today, she becomes almost completely forgotten and overlooked in most textbooks.

Henryka Pustowójtówna, however, was one of the most popular among the participants of the uprising. Only a 30‑day episode in the unit was enough for the press to fell in love with the young soldier. Newspapers in Europe and North America willingly wrote about a brave Polish woman who was fighting in the uprising. Photographs and graphics with her image attracted readers and people kept their reproductions at home. Foreign correspondents interviewed her. Henryka Pustowójtówna worked in a florist's shop in Paris, and during the Franco‑Prussian war she was a volunteer nurse. She passed away (in her sleep) in 1881. She had been then a wife, for several years, of an old friend from the unit of Langiewicz, Stanisław Lewenhard, a doctor, who she met again during the war with Prussia in France. She left four children orphans.

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Fotografia czarno-biała przedstawiająca Annę Henrykę Pustowójtównę w mundurze powstańczym. Kobieta stoi na tle ruin zamku, za nią znajduje się las. Ubrana jest w korzuch, spodnie oraz kozaki, w ręku trzyma karabin. Jest to młoda kobieta z włosami "do ucha" zaczesanymi do tyłu.

The most popular photos of Pustowójtówna show her in insurgent clothes and with weapons. They were circulating all over Europe in different prints. They look like they were made in a forest camp. In fact, they were taken in Prague, in the photographic studio of Moritz Ludwig Winter. Pustowójtówna arrived in Prague on April 3rd or 4th in a black dress (worn in a sign of mourning). But the photographic studio had the appropriate props at their disposal. This enabled the arrangement of a very realistic scene. They were made soon after the women soldier left the unit, as she still has short hair there.

The photography is a quite unique example. Usually, during the uprising, women were portrayed as sensitive ladies in black dresses, worn as a sign of national mourning, accompanying the brave and handsome insurgents. In fact, dozens of women worked as nurses, helping prisoners, hiding illegal documents, transporting weapons and helping to implement the orders of the Polish Underground State. They were fighting with weapons, as did Henryka Pustowójtówna, peasants, townswomen, as well as poorer noblewomen. They were fighting despite the prohibition of the Polish National Government. Few commanders allowed them to participate in military operations, but usually, their gender was revealed only at the battlefields.