Single Frame Journal #7

Jive-Reflection Eternal

Jive is a Brooklyn-based photographer rooted in social-documentary practice, attentive to everyday life and the unguarded moments most people ignore. Her work has been recognized by cultural pillars like KITH and the Tribeca Film Festival, which says a lot about the clarity of her vision. Reflection Eternal, shown in What Had Happened Was, fits naturally into the exhibition’s intention.

I stopped at her piece because it radiates that atmosphere of a first experience, something that imprints itself on you whether you’re ready or not. And yes, with the risk of sounding a bit cheesy, the analogy with film photography really works: whatever you live now is its own kind of snapshot. It doesn’t reveal itself instantly. It needs time, light, chemistry—its own conditions in the inner camera obscura—to develop. Along the way it shifts, stains, overexposes, softens. But in the end, it becomes something you recognise as yours. You’ve metabolised it. In many cases tailored to current needs, emerging consciously or otherwise.

And that’s where Reflection Eternal hits: in the gravity of firsts. The first scraped knee that hurt less than your crush’s no. The first drag of smoke rolling through your lungs. The first time you’ve attempted running from yourself. The first feelings trampled by a self that’s become a mercenary in the chase for the next big rush. The first punch thrown and the first one taken, the first beer rhyme, the first joint, on “What I Got” by Sublime.

These things aren’t dramatic; they’re just persistent. They stay with a clarity that grows sharper, not weaker, as time moves on. Henri Bergson said it simply: “In reality, everything is memory.”

And maybe that’s why this image resonates—it doesn’t try to immortalize the moment; it just acknowledges the fact that it already is.
 I still carry them with me—or rather, they carry me when I get tired.