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Taras Szmagala, Sr. is an active member of the Ukrainian community in Cleveland, OH, where he was born in 1935. He received his BA from Allegheny College in 1955 and an MA from John Carroll University in 1967, after which he held a number of management positions at US Steel in Cleveland, for Parma Public Schools, and later  V.P. for Government Relations and Assistant General Manager at the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. Szmagala Sr. worked on a number of political campaigns, including Robert Taft Jr and Richard Nixon, while also holding leadership positions in various community organizations, including the United Ukrainian Organizations of Ohio, as a member of the board for the Ukrainian Credit Union, the Ukrainian Museum Archives and others. 

In 1991, Szmagala Sr. was appointed by President George H. W. Bush as a representative from the Ukrainian-American community as part of the official delegation that went to Kyiv for the opening of the memorial for the Babyn Yar Massacre in 1941. That year he also organized a meeting at the White House with President Bush after Ukraine's declaration of independence, shortly after which the White House recognized the country as a sovereign state. 

Despite the lack of formal eduction in photography, Leonard Szmaglik became one of the most important photographers in the history of Gdansk (Poland).

For 30 years Szmaglik worked in Gdansk Shipyard, but since childhood photography has been his passion, which he cultivated since the 1950s. He photographed everything and everywhere. The still-growing collection of his pictures documents over five decades of official events (visits of Fidel Castro or Charles de Gaulle, state parades and celebrations), as well as everyday life scenes: shop windows, erections of new buildings, rock festivals, markets and fairs. His photos show the journey that Gdansk and its inhabitants underwent on a way to freedom.

Szmaglik's pictures were presented on numerous exhibitions and the photographer was appreciated for his works, eg. with the Prize of the Mayor of Gdansk for the merits for the city.

Szmaglik contributed to the Photographic Collection of European Solidarity Centre (ECS) in Gdansk with a huge number of his photographs, which make only a part of the photographer's vast portfolio.

Photographer active on the Polish press market for 40 years. 
One of founders and collectors of the collection of the Association of Documentalists "The Road", engaged in its activities since 2008.
He worked as a photojournalist for "Świat Młodych" (Eng. "Youth's World"), a youth style magazine popular in socialist Poland. He photographed social and political life in Poland in socialism and after 1989. When "Świat Młodych" had closed down in 1989, he was forced to cooperate with various magazines that were left on Polish press market.