CELEBRATING 40 Years Behind the Lens
Published March 23, 2026
David Joyall joined the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) in 1986, at a moment when microfilm preservation and darkroom methods were at the forefront of cultural heritage imaging.
Four decades later, the field is now defined by megapixels, color calibration, and complex digital workflows. During that time, David has witnessed (and sometimes helped steer) those changes in NEDCC's Imaging Services department.
Over the course of his career, David has participated in countless once-in-a-lifetime projects, contributed technical innovations that expanded NEDCC’s imaging services, and mentored dozens of emerging cultural heritage imaging professionals. In recognition of this legacy, the Center has named its new digitization lab the David Joyall Imaging Lab in his honor. The plaque, recently installed at the lab’s entrance, reads:
Recognized in 2026 for exemplifying excellence, preserving history, and advancing innovation. Presented with appreciation for his kindness and legacy of generous mentorship.
We have asked David to reflect on his career thus far and to share of some of his experiences and highlights.
DAVID JOYALL, SENIOR COLLECTIONS PHOTOGRAPHER
During the course of a career, you can expect technological improvements to change the way you perform your job. In my case, the transition meant starting with preserving photographs in a darkroom environment in 1986 and over the next 40 years transitioning to the digital camera systems of today.
Left to Right: Heather Cuneo, David Joyall, and Patti Gravel in the NEDCC film duplication lab. Original caption from the NEDCC Winter 1992 Newsletter: “Staff from the photoduplication department at NEDCC inspect interpositives from negatives housed in the Gottscho collection at the Library of Congress. The expansion and automation of NEDCC’s photographic darkroom in its new facility have streamlined the duplication of collections of nitrate, early safety, and glass plate negatives.
Starting Out: Analog Film Preservation
When I first started at NEDCC, the Photoduplication Department was performing large-scale negative duplication for institutions with glass plate, nitrate, and diacetate negatives in their collection. These negatives represented a hundred years of photography’s history, and I started to understand just how important this work was when NEDCC began receiving requests from federal institutions like the National Archives and National Park Service to create duplicates of their early negative collections.
Examples of nitrate and acetate deterioration
David Joyall worked with Lafayette Gosselin Jr. (Art) for nine years. From the photoduplication era to digital imaging.
From the beginning of my time here, NEDCC has used the now-standard shadow normalization duplication method and developed film following the best practices for preservation. Shadow normalization requires measuring the densities of the negative being duplicated and using those measurements to determine the exposure duration that will best record the original negative’s full tonal range. And archival film processing required us to frequently test and replace the chemicals we used for development. This tripled the time we spent washing the film to ensure all of the residual developer was removed, otherwise the negatives could fade and/or discolor.
Measuring negative density using a Macbeth densitometer.
The value of these efforts became clear to me decades later when NEDCC was asked to digitize photographs from the Clara Sipprell Papers, which are held by Syracuse University’s Special Collections Research Center. I was first introduced to this collection in the 1980s when I duplicated many of Sipprell’s negatives for the University. Then, when it came time to digitize the collection in 2019, Syracuse sent us both the original negatives and the interpositives I had created in the 80s (interpositives are the physical preservation surrogates created by duplicating unstable negatives onto new polyester-based film).
Syracuse did this because they knew that many of the original negatives, which were on both nitrate and acetate film, had deteriorated over the last 30+ years, and asked NEDCC to digitize the best version. I was pleased to see that in all cases the duplicates looked great, while many of the originals were now severely channeled and deformed. This allowed us to create new digital surrogates that faithfully represented Sipprell’s iconic photographs even though the original negatives were compromised.
Contact duplication for an 8”X10” black and white negative.
David Joyall using an 8”X10” enlarger, 1997. Check out NEDCC’s original web page introducing “Preservation Mircrofilming” from 1997.
Introducing Digitization
Conversations around offering digital imaging services at NEDCC emerged in the 1990’s, soon after the Center began hosting its School for Scanning conference, which was one of the earliest digitization training resources geared to the cultural heritage community. Even though NEDCC was introducing many cultural heritage professionals to digitization for the first time, the Center’s Directors of Preservation Services (Steve Dalton) and Imaging Services (Susan Wrynn) recognized that the technology was still rapidly evolving and expensive, and that the field hadn’t developed the image quality benchmarks required for it to become a real preservation tool. So, I took advantage of this transition period to familiarize myself with the new technology and to learn how our colleagues at other institutions were approaching the coming digital age.
From this engagement with colleagues in the field, and our years performing standards-based analog film preservation, we began offering quality-focused digital imaging services in the early 2000s. For example, NEDCC practiced lab-wide digital color management from the beginning, calibrating cameras, monitors, and printers so that we saw what our cameras saw. While I’ve always been proud of our image quality, demand for our digital services has grown significantly since then and I’ve had to stay flexible and adapt my thinking to maintain our standards at this larger scale.
We are now a staff of ten photographers. I think the demand for our services is a testament to the teamwork and skills we bring to the department. Early in my career I benefited from having a mentor at NEDCC, Steve Puglia, who was very generous with his knowledge. I try to follow his example and share whatever I can with the new photographers that join the department.
Photo of Steve Puglia by Barry Wheeler
Q and A: David’s Highlights Through the Years
What was the most interesting or unusual collection you worked with during your time at NEDCC?
I had the privilege to photograph Martin Luther King Jr.’s briefcase. We needed to document the exact order of the items as they were being removed. All of his personal effects including drafts of his speeches were returned to the same order he left them.
And what was the most challenging project?
One project that stands out was a series of panoramic nitrate negatives that were taken by Roy Chapman Andrews in Mongolia. We needed to duplicate these negatives and create a set of prints. Some of these negatives were over 5 feet long. This collection came from the Museum of Natural History in New York.
How about the project you’re proudest of?
I really enjoyed the Jekyll Island project at the Mistletoe Cottage because I had the opportunity to see the project through from beginning to very end: I went onsite with the conservators to help them remove the best-preserved section of wallpaper from the ceiling, then after they conserved the piece I digitized it, digitally restored the image, and printed a roomful of reproduction wallpaper that the museum has installed.
Lastly, what was the weirdest thing you saw pasted into a scrapbook that you were digitizing?
It wasn’t exactly a scrapbook, but I found a fin from a flying fish pasted into a whaling logbook from the Nantucket Historical Association.
Behind the Scenes
Explore the following NEDCC Stories for an inside look at David Joyall’s work over the years.
Chinese Export Wallpaper at Jekyll Island’s Mistletoe Cottage
Connecticut Royal Charter of 1662
Conservation of the South Carolina Constitutions
Digitizing Coca-Cola Photograph Albums
Digitizing Oversize Scrapbooks
Explore Imaging Services highlights and achievements via the History page.