Biography
Romuald Broniarek (1931-2013) – a photographer and photojournalist who worked for the weekly Przyjaźń, a subsidiary of the Polish-Soviet Friendship Society, throughout his professional life and until the fall of communism.
He was born in Warsaw’s Wola district. His father was a policeman, and his mother was a homemaker. In the first days of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, his parents were deported to Auschwitz. Romuald’s grandparents took him and his brother Andrzej into their care.
After the war, the Broniareks moved to Jelenia Góra. Romuald worked as an assistant in a photography studio. He soon bought his first 35mm Leica to earn money as a photographer at weddings and funerals.
In 1950, shortly after he moved to Warsaw, Broniarek began working at the Zbyszewskis’ photography studio, where he perfected his craft. He eventually joined the guild and passed the apprentice exam. In 1951, all photographic establishments were nationalized and turned into the Polifoto Photographic Services Work Cooperative. That same year, he began working as a laboratory technician at the Central Photographic Agency (CAF) and occasionally took documentary photos for its technical department.
In 1955, he began his long-term collaboration with the weekly Przyjaźń, first as a lab tech and later as a photojournalist. He worked in this capacity until the magazine closed in 1990.
In the 1960s, Broniarek joined the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR), remaining a member until its dissolution.
Journalist Łukasz Modelski, the author of an extended interview with Broniarek, described the photographer’s work and his years at the propagandist Przyjaźń as follows:
“The magazine published by the Polish-Soviet Friendship Society was Romuald Broniarek’s only full-time job from the mid-1950s to 1990, and propaganda photography was the only type of photography he did professionally. However, the nature of his reporting changed with the times and the country’s political direction.
“In Romuald Broniarek’s photographic body of work, accounts from visits to Poland by Soviet notables and official ceremonies, and other clearly propagandist photos are mixed with reportorial snapshots, which today constitute a document of the reality of the Polish People’s Republic. Even though he mainly dealt with propaganda photojournalism and hid his camera when an opportunity to take a more controversial photo, inconsistent with the party line, arose, he would allow himself to take some genre or ‘unofficial’ photographs. His photos were usually carefully composed, well-exposed, and tweaked during processing in the darkroom. The world through his eyes is sometimes postcard-like. His photographs, although exaggeratedly aesthetic and meticulously staged, do not lose their value as a documentary record; his photographic talent, the great care he took with composition, and his personal aesthetic sensitivity lend these frames a value that is far more than just documentary.”
The photographer licensed approximately 1,400 photographs to the Polish photography agency FORUM and, in 2006, 80,000 of his pictures, negatives, and slides made their way into the KARTA Center Foundation’s collection to ensure his archive was preserved properly.
In 2010, Broniarek’s photos were shown at the History Meeting House in the group exhibition The Four Seasons of Gierek: 1970–1980 Poland in FORUM Agency Photos, and in 2013 at the Free Time: Photographs exhibition at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art. He passed away shortly before the exhibition's opening.
Sources:
“Fotobiografia PRL. Opowieści fotoreporterów” [A Photobiography of the Polish People’s Republic: The Stories of Photojournalists], Znak Publishing House, Kraków, 2013; the Broniarek family archive
Exhibition:
Curators: Katarzyna Broniarek-Niemczycka, Filip Niedenthal
Photo editing: Beata Łyżwa-Sokół
Graphic design: Marysia Mastalerz
Project coordination and exhibition production: Olga Pigłowska, cooperation: Katarzyna Puchalska, Magdalena Stefańczyk
Editor: Małgorzata Purzyńska
Translation: Nitzan Reisner
Proofreading: Anna Kaniewska (Polish), Adam Żóławski (English)
Pre-press: Tomasz Kubaczyk
Exhibition installation: Willow Service Mateusz Wierzbicki
Photo printing: Qprint
Accompanying events: Katarzyna Broniarek, Marta Czyż, Weronika Komorowska, Agata Kucharska, Filip Niedenthal
Poster design: Anna Piwowar
PR team: Marta Czyż, Marianna Januszewicz, Marta Rogowska, Nadzieja Rudzka, Kaja Stępkowska
Photographs courtesy of the Archive of the KARTA Centre Foundation, Łukasz Modelski's archive, the FORUM Polish Photography Agency
