Nature and Fervor: David Cova

To David Cova, people deeply involved in listening and moving to music look much the same as people having a religious experience. 

Cova's black and white photos, some of which were shown recently at the Warner Library, aim to capture this enraptured state.  Also at the library were a sampling of his evocative color nature photos and an impressive panoramic Tappan Zee Bridge night scene.

A native of Tarrytown and a father of two, Matthew, 10, and Julianna, 7, Cova says that his color work began with the experience of seeing how Matthew was engaging with the world.  

“He was learning every second, seeing, touching, smelling, tasting everything,” Cova said. "Using all of his senses, all the time."

The fascinated father set out to capture his son’s expressions.  From there he decided to stop and look more closely at the world himself, and to share his vision through photography.  Looking through the camera’s lens, he said, has enabled him to see more subtleties in people’s expressions, and revealed to him such things as how gently a bee lands on a flower.

An image of branches in varying degrees of focus (all images attached), turns out on closer inspection to include a richly red bird, tucked into a snug perch.  A spider web in the foreground, by the nature of the perspective, is many times larger than the cows grazing in the distance behind it.  Its delicacy contrasts with the thick shapes of the cattle.  The grass, dark at the bottom of the image, gets lighter as it goes upward towards the horizon, where it is most distant, and where a yellow sky throws its warmth onto it and the cattle.  The twisted wire ends on the fence add another interesting, contrasting shape.

“The nuances of the human condition” are the focus of his black and white series.

Cova has been involved with the dance community since he began going to clubs at the age of fifteen.  Though his tastes are eclectic, his favorite is House Music, especially the type with deep basslines and soulful vocals. 

“When you’re on the dance floor, it infiltrates and takes over your soul," Cova said. "In the right space with the right sound, it’s really a religious experience.”  

DJs are like priests in his eyes, delivering the message from the altar-like booth, and the people on the dance floor respond with “intensity, soul and release.”

He feels that the use of black and white for this group of images  lets the viewer focus on the emotion without the distraction of color.  He uses a slow shutter speed when he wants to blur bodies in motion and sometimes manipulates the images with his computer. 

Even though his work has much in common with photojournalism, his end product is art rather than pure documentation.

 In one striking photo, a woman is seen from the front in a three-quarter view and also in profile in the mirror behind her. She looks upward and her expression is reverential.  Compositionally, strong diagonals make it dynamic. 

In another, a couple dancing are shown merged together, a male head near a female arm giving clues to the makeup of this unusual figure.  The floor slants sharply, providing a strong diagonal in this image as well, and a counterpoint to the shape of the couple. 

The man in the “Adrenaline” shirt is the subject in two photos, in which his light-catching dreadlocks and hand are in motion.  A singer gives it all she has in image 7, bending deeply as she performs, while around her people extend recording devices or cameras to capture the excitement.  It is a dynamic and atmospheric image.

Cova is the House Photographer at Cielo Nightclub in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, and a few of the images that were at the Warner Library were made there.

He has shown at galleries in New York City, most recently in a group show of Manhattan street photos in 2009 at the Haven Gallery.  Closed now, it was on Bruckner Boulevard in the South Bronx, an area which he said has many artists.

When asked about photographers who have influenced him he cited Julia Skya, a young photographer whose work he says is similar to his, and Muema, whose work he sees online.

  He writes for a website, www.BounceFM.com, and sometimes covers events as both photographer and writer.  He teaches computer technology as well, and heads a photography club at the Smith School, a private alternative day school on the upper west side of Manhattan.

If you missed the show at the library, you haven’t missed your chance to see Cova’s work in person, since he is currently the exclusive artist for Bridge View Tavern in Sleepy Hollow.  He often changes the images there with the season, but right now you’re in luck if you’d like to come in from the cold and get a reminder of what the world looks like without snow.  It’s still summer there, at least in his photos.

You can look for his images on Facebook at www.facebook.com/covaimages and Cova’s own website, www.covaimages.com.