Die Groot Krokodil

Although it has been a bit late coming, I have finally got around to writing a report from my Top 32 12-3 finish at GP Birmingham earlier this year. I had started out 8-1 and managed to run moderately well Day 2 to cash my first event and make a good start to the Pro season for 2017/8. 

Although it has been a bit late coming, I have finally got around to writing a report from my Top 32 12-3 finish at GP Birmingham earlier this year. I had started out 8-1 and managed to run moderately well Day 2 to cash my first event and make a good start to the Pro season for 2017/8.

Background

Prior to the event I had managed to roundly 2-3 two MTGO Competitive leagues and go 3-1 at a friendly mid-week paper event down at Dark Sphere in London. Although my results were far from stellar, I more or less understood why I was losing games and was making steady progress to knowing how the deck is supposed to play. My closest corollary thus far in Modern is UG Infect.

Infect requires you to be able to do two things; the first is a tight balance of composed and patient play, amassing a critical number of cards and forcing through the win over a long and drawn out game. The other is having a good read for the situation and knowing when to go “all in” on a turn and be stone dead if they have the right card, with the prize usually being winning the game on the spot. Storm more or less plays the same way, with the debate on playing a turn 2 cost reducer usually being matchup dependent and/or how critical the Baral/ Electromancer is to your ability to win.

Why Storm?

Having established that I wasn’t doing very well in my initial testing, you might very well be wondering what ponderous set of decisions led me to registering what most people consider to be a challenging deck to play at a GP. Well, let me reveal a little secret to you about Storm in Modern: it isn’t that hard to play.

While I don’t put it into the category of Titanshift or EldraziTron which both genuinely have very few meaningful decisions and whilst the Storm deck has a lot of sequencing optimisations to consider, it really only requires you to be able to do basic maths and and count to something like 20. Or at least, I think that is true for the in game decisions, which are typically only truly interesting with the second Gifts pile you make. The “hard” decisions I believe are mostly made in sideboarding and mulliganing, where experience in the matchups comes to play an extremely important part of the decision making process. Many decks while sideboarding are not necessarily boarding into hate for your opponents sideboard cards. You are also typically not pivoting in a totally different way or even removing what might appear to be your slam dunk namesake card, something that is quite unintuitive to some players.

Storm is fundamentally good for the following reasons:

1. It has a reliable Turn 3 goldfish kill. Speed and consistency are everything in Modern, the format where dying on T4 is usually guaranteed.

2. It can kill on Turn 2 with the perfect hand using grapeshot and pseudo kill on Turn 2 /3 with goblins a greater percentage of the time. Even the bad matchups can sometimes be won, meaning that you’re never truly cold when you sit down to play.

3. The deck is very redundant with 8 cost reducers, 12 rituals and 8 cantrips. Most hands with a Bear, Cantrip and some Rituals are a keep.

4. Two colours and many basics means you take minimal damage from lands/ the coloured requirements are quite good. This allows us to sometimes play Blood Moon and register 3 basic islands in our deck.

5. Most decks don’t have good graveyard hate game 1, meaning that they have very few axis to interact with you on.

6. The opponent tilt value from playing storm.

The Event

Started 2-0 with byes, a critical aspect to success at Grand Prix.

R3 Titanshift 2-1

R4 Elves 2-0

R5 Eldrazi Tron 1-2

R6 GB Tron 2-1

R7 GW Company 2-1

R8 4C Shadow 2-1

R9 Jeskai Control 2-0

R10 Bant Eldrazi 0-2

R11 Eldrazi Tron 2-1

R12 Abzan Coco 1-2

R13 Abzan Midrange

R14 Eldrazi Tron 2-0

R15 Burn 2-0

My List

Maindeck

4 Baral, Chief of Compliance 4 Desperate Ritual 1 Empty the Warrens 3 Misty Rainforest 4 Gifts Ungiven 4 Goblin Electromancer 3 Grapeshot 3 Island 4 Manamorphose 1 Mountain 2 Past in Flames 4 Pyretic Ritual 4 Remand 4 Scalding Tarn 4 Serum Visions 4 Sleight of Hand 4 Spirebluff Canal 3 Steam Vents

Sideboard

1 Negate 2 Dismember 2 Dispel 1 Echoing Truth 2 Empty the Warrens 3 Lightning Bolt 2 Pieces of the Puzzle 2 Shattering Spree

There are a few rules in Modern and one of the main ones is that you have to be as proactive as possible. The inherent variance of the format mostly comes in your match-ups which means that you often have lost the round when you sit down to play. A good example of this is Titanshift against most fair green midrange decks. As the fair deck you are something like sub 20% to curve out and kill them fast enough before the inevitable Primeval Titan or Scapeshift kills you all whilst you are busy durdling about.

Storm bucks this trend and has the ability to more or less win against anyone given that you have the speed and resiliency necessary to beat even your tough matchups. Landing a turn 2 Baral or Goblin Electromancer puts them to the test immediately and usually means they have to respect the possibility of dying the next turn.

My Sideboarding Guide

Storm is the kind of deck where sideboarding is very important to get right, as you aren’t bringing in your generic haymakers and the rest of the maindeck is a finely tuned engine meaning you can’t start cannibalising all the parts whilst still expecting it to function.

Without further ado:

Grind through their heavy removal and kill with Goblins matchups (Abzan, Jund, Grixis Death’s Shadow etc.)

The philosophy here is to transition to a more value orientated deck that is probably not going to go off early and instead try to slog through their removal. You can pivot your win condition from Grapeshot to Empty the Warrens and make their spot removal suffer as you offer them a paucity of good targets. Lightning Bolt and Fatal Push don’t line up very well to lots of Goblins and you can usually hold onto the mana bear until such time where it is actually useful in play. Do not run them out into certain death for no value, you must be a patient Peter.

Pieces is great against graveyard hate and lets you dig for the right pieces whilst also filling up the yard for future Past in Flames. Empty is the backup win condition and is generally quite hard to beat for these sort of spot removal heavy creature decks. I personally like Dismember against the Angler/ Tasigur/ Goyf decks as a way to stop you randomly dying to creature beats. I might cut these on the play in favour of leaving in a few Remands, especially against the Delve threats or sweepers.

Cutting gifts might not seem very intuitive but as many decks board into Leyline of the Void, Rest in Peace or Surgical Extraction you are usually incentivised to reduce your vulnerability to those cards. The third Grapeshot is less essential given the newly diversified threat base and Remand isn’t very good at stopping the cards we really care about in these matchups (it also sucks against Inquisition or Thoughtseize).

-          + 2 Pieces of the Puzzle

-          +2 Empty the Warrens

-          +2 Dismember

-          - 4 Remand

-          - 1 Grapeshot

-          - 1 Gifts Ungiven

Kill them as fast as possible matchups (Burn, Tron, Affinty, Titanshift, Elves, Ad Nauseum, and Infect etc.)

Other combo decks frequently feature Artifacts that we care about. Even Titanshift will usually board into a mix of Relic of Progenitus, Grafdigger’s Cage or Chalice of the Void. We are really looking to go as fast as possible and try to race them, which usually means not playing around things too much apart from stuff we cannot beat or want to try and head off. Most of these decks also don’t have a plethora of removal for our bears, which means that we can often keep hands with only one and even board down to 6 in favour of more meaningful interaction such as Shattering Spree or Echoing Truth. The plan is to be prepared for their interaction and also prepared to beat them on a slightly different axis. Having access to lightning bolts against decks like Infect, Elves and Affinity allows us to win on the draw and slow down their fastest possible starts. Often T3 with no interaction on the draw against Affinity spells doom. Burn is sometimes called an unwinnable matchup, which is usually true in the face of an Eidolon game 1, but is quite beatable in post board games. Lean on your bolts and be careful using them. That Goblin Guide might kill us in the long run, but if you can’t take an Eidolon off the table then it’s game over my friend.

-          + 2 Shattering Spree

-          + 3 Lightning Bolts

-          +1 Echoing Truth

-          - 2 Electromancer

-          -1 Empty the Warrens

-          - 2 Remand

-          -1 Gifts Ungiven

Patience and knowledge of the stack matchups (UW, UWR Control etc.)

The name of the game here is once again becoming patient Peter and forcing them to interact on one of their main choke points, which is usually either mana or cards. What this means practically is waiting, playing out land and then finally going over the top of their counter magic using our Remands (which are great on our own spells) and making use of Past in Flames / Gifts to grind them out of cards over the course of a longer game. Spell Queller can be a pain, so be careful not to walk into that one. I typically find this matchup to be favourable if you don’t run Gifts or another crucial spell into counter magic for no gain.

N.B. This is not an exact guide but more following general themes. Please do not bring in Shattering Spree against Elves or Lightning Bolt against Titanshift.

A quick matchup rundown of the Top 10 decks on MTG Goldfish:

Storm: It’s the mirror. Don’t mess up.

Affinity: Great for you on the play, still probably favoured on the draw.

Jeskai Tempo: Moderately favoured.

Eldrazi Tron: Draw dependent for them, probably a slight dog if they draw averagely.

Titanshift: The unlosable matchup.

GDS: Not good. Can storm them out if they go low enough. The critical mix of disruption, stubborn denial and removal makes this tough.

Tron: Moderately favoured.

Eldrazi and Taxes: The bears can help overcome Thalia, otherwise a moderate dog.

Burn: You’re going to die. Can maybe win if they don’t land Eidolon T2.

CoCo Decks: Favoured. They can’t usually interact with the combo Game 1 and Game 2 they are relying on a small list of cards to interact meaningfully (Eidolon of Rhetoric, for which we have Dismember/ Echoing Truth and precious little else).

A few more closing points regarding UR Gifts Storm:

1.       Try to play around graveyard hate by boarding into Pieces and away from Gifts/ PiF.

2.       Try not to expose yourself to Surgical Extraction if possible, this should be done by not putting your Grapeshots in the graveyard unless absolutely necessary. Try to draw them naturally if you suspect a Surgical. You can set up Gifts piles with cantrips and more Gifts to do this.

3.       The magic number for mana left over after a Gifts is 3. With 3 red mana they are dead and it doesn’t matter which two cards they put into your hand from the classic “ PiF, Desperate, Pyretic, Manamorphose” pile. You will always have enough to cast PiF and keep going off.

4.       Early Goblins can often do the trick, you need the stomach to go in hard on what can appear to be quite risky. Know when it is a good idea and when they are likely to just have a Ratchet Bomb to make your day go south quickly

5.       Shattering Spree is very good against Chalice. The copies can go through the trigger and blow up multiple annoying artifacts.

6.       Remanding your own Grapeshots is an easy way to generate more Storm without using the graveyard.

7.       Don’t forget your loots from Baral when countering spells. This is also a good reason to hold excess lands.

8.       The god hand is a Turn 2 kill. “Land, land, Baral, Desperate, Desperate, Manamorphose, Gifts” can often turn into a win if you draw a second ritual off a manamorphose or a cantrip you find along the way.

That’s all for now but I’ll be playing Storm in Madrid on one of the Mana Gaming Teams we send there for the team event. I’ve also been attempting to grind out a few wins with the deck in recent PPTQs to no notable success as yet.

Until next time:

After a fairly long break from writing I’ve decided that there may indeed be some benefit to cataloging my Magical thoughts, hopefully helping some new players and getting some feedback from those more experienced than myself.

For my first really solid finish at a large event (excluding GPs) I decided that it might be worth writing a tournament report and musing a little on what makes Infect good. This will cover the list and how things are shaping up moving forward for my favourite modern archetype. At this point I’d like to start out by saying that most Infect lists are fairly stock and the differences tend to be quite minimal. Most of this comes from the homogenisation after Owen Turtenwald wrote about the deck and set the standard for good Blue/Green based builds. 

My list is certainly not unique and a lot of the differences you do find tend to be in the sideboard or are personal choices for the local meta. 

Decklist: Blue Green Infect 

1 Viridian Corrupter 4 Blighted Agent 4 Glistener Elf 4 Noble Hierarch

4 Gitaxian Probe 1 Slip Through Space 4 Become Immense 4 Might of Old Krosa 4 Mutagenic Growth 2 Apostle's Blessing 4 Vines of Vastwood 1 Spell Pierce 2 Twisted Image 1 Dismember

2 Forest 4 Inkmoth Nexus 2 Pendelhaven 2 Breeding Pool 4 Windswept Heath 4 Wooded Foothills 1 Verdant Catacombs 1 Misty Rainforest

Sideboard: 

2 Spell Pierce 1 Twisted Image 2 Dismember 2 Dispel 1 Grafdigger's Cage 2 Nature's Claim 1 Dryad Arbor 4 Kitchen Finks

A good place to start would be the cards I am not playing and the reasoning behind my choices. The main ones that are missing from the main are: Spellskite, Groundswell, Distortion Strike and Wild Defiance.

First of all, the main reason I’m not playing Spellskite is that with a main deck Viridian Corrupter it can be a bit dangerous playing odd artifacts that I might have to end up destroying unwittingly. As one of the best cards in the mirror and very useful against removal heavy decks, a switch for Spellskite would be a fine addition and likely one that I would make moving forward. Another compelling reason is that in game one, it is often advantageous to be as proactive as possible and seek to play in a streamlined fashion. Though it costs three mana, which is incredibly expensive and clunky for this deck, the Corrupter adds an important thirteenth infector, that with 2 power and toughness, doesn’t auto die to -1-1 effects and makes counting to 10 a little easier. 

Groundswell is quite all-in and doesn’t play defence as well as other pump options while also suffering from the problem of not always being active. With only 20 lands in the deck and then only 4 fetch able sources, it can be quite hit and miss reliably turning landfall on. 

Distortion strike is likely better than Slip through space and I have made the switch. The cantrip is nice, but have a double unblockable allows for kills to be sequenced over two turns while also saving on mana - a crucial aspect of the Infect deck.

Wild Defiance is an acceptable choice in a bolt heavy meta, but doesn’t do very much alone and consequentially (in addition to costing three) isn’t a viable option in the main generally speaking. 

The deck has a fairly straightforward 20 card sideboard, where you play several one or two copies of a card in the main that gives you an edge in certain match ups, offering some interaction, while also not diluting your game plan too much. The fact that the Twisted Images also happen to beat opposing Spellskites, one of the best cards against you, while also cantripping and keeping the cards flowing adds something to the deck for certain. 

In terms of the WMCQ itself, it was 242 players in Birmingham and that meant 9 rounds of swiss before Top 8. 

My swiss rounds in order: 

Storm: 2-0

Merfolk: 2-1 

Living End: 2-0

Affinity: 2-0

Burn: 2-1

Bant Eldrazi: 1-2 

Suicide Zoo: 2-0

Infect: 2-0

Infect: ID

Top 8

Abzan: 2-0

Jeskai Prowess 0-2 

Why Infect? 

Infect is a very strong, pro active deck that can punish your opponent for not interacting or threatening to win the game quickly. At times, even through multiple removal spells, Infect is capable of putting the win together with a mix of protection and pump spells, perhaps best exemplified by Vines of Vastwood which plays both sides of the ball effectively. Infect is about a turn faster than most of the other linear aggro decks, while also having solid game against midrange and control. Able to pull out wins from nowhere, Infect also utilises Phyrexian mana in probably the best possible way of all the decks in modern aside from Suicide Zoo. In part due to the explosive nature of it’s draws and the single mindedness of the strategy, Infect often feels quite challenging to play against and borderline unfair. 

Access to Gitaxian Probe means that you are often working with perfect information and casting multiple spells per turn, all the while cycling through your deck. Become Immense also utilises another under appreciated resource in your graveyard, granting access to a greatly discounted pump spell that synergies with all your fetches, free and cheap spells. 

Of all the decks I played I felt favoured against Storm, Living End, Merfolk, Affinity and Bant Eldrazi. Burn, Suicide Zoo, Abzan, Jeskai and the Mirror are all quite tough to handle and often rely on strong sideboard cards such as Spell Pierce or Dismember. Spell Pierce especially is probably my favourite card in the deck, offering a lot of utility for one Blue and covering the angles against a wide range of potential problem cards; ranging from Lingering Souls to Liliana of the Veil to Living End. One of the main reasons that it is so effective is that with all your spells being quite cheap, it puts the pressure on your opponent very early on, often leading to “Hail Mary” plays that matchup poorly against Pierce. Cryptic Command for example starts to looks much worse as a defensive tool when it ends up being an incredibly mana inefficient play. 

When sequencing threats and spells I like to default on leading with a Noble Hierarch if given the option between that and a Glistener Elf. In my experience, early mana development tends to pay off more on turns 2 and 3 and painless blue mana can be very important in certain match ups. However, if you know that either you are in a pure race or if you have multiple infect threats in hand then leading on elf, following up with a Hierarch on T2 for the exalted damage, is acceptable. 

Unless you are digging for something specific, I like to hold onto the Gitaxian Probes until the turn where you go for a big attack. The longer you hold it, the more information you will get and T1-T2 your plays might not change all that much. Where I think this is actively a mistake is against Burn, the threat of an Eidolon of the Great Revel means that you can’t really delay on casting Probe, which afterwards becomes unfeasibly costly to cast. 

This isn’t exactly true when it comes to your pump-spells. A lot of deciding on when to pump comes down to managing your mana, graveyard count and feasibility of getting in for damage. For example, if Glistener Elf is your only creature then it is often correct to jam for as much damage as you can early, given that it will likely become harder to push damage through later. Filling your yard for BI and using your mana in an efficient way ends up being crucial on the final kill turn, because given limited resources the ability to delve for the max amount can mean the difference between victory and a narrow defeat. 

Kitchen Finks is one of the all-star sideboard cards that give you a fighting chance against Burn, Suicide Zoo, Jeskai, Abzan and Jund. They fill a multi faceted role of blocking, gaining life, pressuring Planeswalkers and being great sacrifice fodder. 

The main mistakes I made were not punished too heavily, but the most egregious was boarding in Grafdigger’s Cage against Living End. Fortunately I did not draw it during the games but as a PSA, it doesn’t work how you might want it to. I also missed onboard regular damage lethal with a Noble Hierarch, in Infect mirror. As a player, one of my main flaws is getting too set on a single path to victory and therefore missing alternate lines of play. This can be especially important with Infect, where it’s important to be patient and vigilant which means waiting for the best time to move in and not rushing into bad attacks. This can typically mean waiting multiple turns to make an attack, slowly building up resources and crafting a game plan. 

I’ve got a few PPTQs coming up in the next month so will be looking to battle with Infect again. 

Thanks to Axion for the event and Congrats to Graeme for winning with Jeskai Nahiri.

Tom Russell-Mésenge 

Hello all, 

Today I'm going to be bringing you my super secret tech in the Jeskai mirror that conveniently plays well against Brimaz and helps you keep the race on. It is already being played in legacy and comes at the low cost of two mana. Can you tell what it is yet? If you think that I've gone completely crazy and am postulating the widespread play of Eidolon of the Great Revel in a deck where some 90% of our spells are three mana or below then fear not. 

Satyr Firedancer. 

One of the biggest problems in the Jeskai mirror is having to use your invaluable and limited burn to kill opposing threats, leaving you dangerously low on resources and vulnerable to being raced yourself. Jeskai Charm turning itself into Flame Slash is a fine thing when the industry standard is some number of Stormbreath Dragons or Brimaz, King of Oreskos. Of course what you are doing is fairly obviously to your opponents but between some number of God's Willings and Negates you can protect your advantage engine. 

I would recommend playing 3-4 in your sideboard and bringing him in against opponents where you care about their creatures, but are racing cannot afford to throwing it away. Typically I'd avoid boarding this in against Abzan Midrange, but it's fine against the Aggro variant. This is also a fine strategy against the Temur and GR aggro decks, especially as they begin to move away from Polukranos as a staple four of in the main. 

The card does have it's limitations, being a 1/1 means that it's particularly fragile and dies to a lot of random stuff. Though that does offer it some protection from Cracking Doom. Remember that multiple Firedancers trigger multiple times and you can team up the triggers to kill bigger monsters like Arbor Colossus. 

Another card to combat the bigger monster decks is Deflecting Palm, which works fantastically well with Satyr Firedancer. Imagine this situtation - Attack with Stormbreath Dragon, you Palm it and redirect towards your opponent. Firedancer triggers and kills the Dragon. You've generated an 8 point life swing and removed one of their biggest threats. 

Give it a go, tell me what you think. 

I've been playing this deck on and off since before Christmas of last year and as such feel like I can offer some insight into potential deck idea and development. What I've been working on recently is adding some combination of Jace, the Living Guildpact, Polymorphist's Jest and Military Intelligence to the 75. M15 has actually given us some interesting tools and I believe the ability to still be the menace of the deck that we have been earlier in the year. 

The current decklist looks like this: 

Maindeck: Creatures 4 Cloudfin Raptor 4 Frostburn Weird 4 Judge's Familiar 4 Master of Waves 4 Nightveil Specter 4 Tidebinder Mage Enchantments 1 Domestication

2 Military Intelligence

Instants 1 Cyclonic Rift 1 Rapid Hybridization Legendary Artifacts

1 Hall of Triumph Legendary Enchantment Creatures

4 Thassa, God of the Sea

Planeswalkers

1 Jace, the Living Guildpact Basic Lands 20 Island Lands 4 Mutavault Legendary Lands 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx Sideboard: 1 Cyclonic Rift 2 Dispel 2 Dissolve 3 Gainsay 2 Negate 1 Polymorphist's Jest 2 Rapid Hybridization 2 Jace, Architect of Thought

As someone who is absolutely in love with tempo and would quite happily spend the rest of my life casting Echoing Truth, a 4 mana, two blue devotion pip bounce effect is right up my street. Jace's card selection is not to be underestimated either, what he gives you is the ability to dig for the power cards and in addition to Thassa offers a lot of card selection. Jace fits perfectly into the aggro shell and is an on curve tempo boost against many of the mainstays of standard at the moment. Bouncing a Detention Sphere, Banishing Light, Courser of Kruphix, Desecration Demon, Pack Rat, Polukranos or Archangel of Thune before they can make a game changing impact gives Mono Blue some outs that it didn't have before. Especially when we compare him to Jace, Architect of Thought who is probably a more powerful card overall. The raw card draw of Jace, AoT was always good but his slow and steady approach wasn't really what Mono Blue was about. Smashing face and getting them dead are the name of the game, you aren't keeping up once they have resolved a big revelation so it really best to not try. 

Jace, tLG is never going to be really bad, he might not be game changing but having -2 my fair share of Jace, AoT and revealed some land and a Cloudfin Raptor only to have him offed by a Mutavault next turn I can say that this Jace is probably more maindeckable in an unknown field. If you expect Rabble Red, White Weenies and Black Aggro to dominate the tables then I would obviously prefer the Jace that hoses those strategies. 

There are some fringe cases with Jace, tLG where if you have a Master of Waves and Hall of Triumph out (or another Master) you can bounce one of them and replay for huge value and a wave of more tokens. It's important to not underestimate going straight up to 6 loyalty as well, making him hard to kill and easy to use the -3 multiple times. The same goes for bouncing a Domestication and getting to snag something more useful at the time. At the moment a singleton Jace has felt good but I would certainly consider having another one in the main, although I'm a bit unsure of what I'd cut to make room. 

Moving on to Military Intelligence, I'd like to open by just saying that I am genuinely unsure whether it is better or just different to Bident. I know Bident has been a pillar of the deck since it's inception at PT Theros but at four mana it has sometimes been uncastable while simultaneously being fairly underwhelming. The fact it is legendary and that you must connect to draw your cards hasn't gone unnoticed. Further to this I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've used the activated ability in nine months of playing the deck. In comparison being able to play MI and attack with a Mutavault on the same turn can be powerful, only drawing a single card is strictly less powerful but can often be enough to get the job done. You can play multiples and stack the effect while let's be honest if you aren't attacking with two or more creatures you probably aren't winning the game anyway. In my experience Mono Blue is all about curving out, if you can't do that then you get run over by decks going under or over you in terms of power level. What MI enables is the the ability to pull ahead early with card advantage and crucially add some devotion to your board. If they printed it at UU then I'm sure it would be an auto include and replace Bident more or less wholesale. The jury is, for the time being, still out. 

Polymorphist's Jest is a spicy one-of that has been overperforming in recent games and can just straight up blow out an unsuspecting opponent. Dealing with monstrous triggers (the creature is monstrous but the effect doesn't happen), hosing Dragons, Barons, opposing Masters and basically any creature with an ability is powerful and likely much better than Curse of the Swine. 

Vivian Maier, a nanny from New York with a French background was something of a loner, only making a few friends throughout her lifetime and alienating a lot of the people she worked for while simultaneously having a profound, if not necessarily positive, impact on the children's lives. What can be said for certain however is that what she lacked in social skills she more than made up for in photographic genius. Keeping with her desire to be something of a shadow she went by various names over her lifetime, usually variations on Maier (Meyer, Mayer) and due to this there are comparatively few clear records of her life. 

Our story begins with (insert name of producer here) who discovered Vivian's amazing collection of work at an auction in 2007, not thinking very much of it he stored them in his closet for some time before deciding to investigate. The film itself is told mainly from his perspective, while also following the progression of Vivian's story and posthumous rise to fame as one of the finest and most prolific photographers of the twentieth century. 

Gradually we meet some of her wards and employers, learning more about the women and the impression that she left on them. It becomes apparent that although generally liked she was quite bizarre. Always carrying her (insert name of camera) around her neck and venturing out into some of the more destitute areas of Chicago she captured a part of society that traditionally went un noticed and un observed. Although not overly groundbreaking today part of the appeal for photographers and similar artists who wish to comment or track society as a whole is that the underclasses offer something very real and human. No airs and graces, no costumes. 

I've decided to spend a bit of time reviewing the many exhibitions that I'm fortunate enough to go to and see if through my writing I can extract any interesting information or revelations, probably not but we will give it a good shot. 

The exhibit itself runs through until the 9th of June and is one of the finest collections to date of Cartier-Bresson that succeeds in not only explaining his artistic development and stylistic expression but also detailing his political motivations. While queuing one is treated to a detailed timeline of events, following his journey from an amateur with a penchant for drawing to one of the first Westerners allowed into the post-Stalin Soviet Union. 

Though undoubtedly a man who came very much from the French bourgeoisie, who was fortunate enough to spend much of his life travelling all over the world and very much above the hard realities of life that his art tried to document on various occasions; the hypocrisy of the champagne socialism (gauche caviar to the French) at play should not spoil your enjoyment of his work. 

From the beginning of his career in the Ivory Coast, to documenting shopping habits in the Soviet Union the hundreds of photos available are a fantastic window into his world. A defining figure of Frenchness who seems to have documented one way or another most major events of the 20th Century. 

For me, one of the most enlightening aspects of the exhibition is the way that his work is organised loosely chronologically, but primarily by style, form, technique and subject. This allows a thorough understanding of his method and an insight into his thought process. His obsession with "veiled eroticism" the idea that when looking at something partially covered, there exists a longing need to see why lies beneath, of course impossible in photos. He therefore embarked upon a long series of people and object in rags, blankets and clothing who were mostly obscured. As a collection of work it is quite different to what I have seen before or hence. 

A fierce anti-colonialist Cartier-Bresson spent much time travelling through French Africa is the 1920's, his main goal with the photos was to depict African life on a day to day basis, striving to move away from the traditional Western obsession with exoticism he sought the everyday rhythm of life on the dark continent. The work above is from the Ivory Coast and along with a modest collection of other such works is a fantastic window into the past. 

Due to the extent of his career and his opportunity to travel extensively across the globe he was actively involved in many political and artistic movements, one of the most influential on Cartier-Bresson were the works and thoughts of the surrealists. Exemplified by his depiction of people lying down, asleep or posed strangely the distorted images he produced are some of his finest pieces. Above is my personal favourite of the collection, the neck with lipstick rotated to look like a man's face, the imagery is quite stark and the piece itself is quite unlike the rest of the exhibition. 

If you can find your way to Paris to see this marvellous exhibition then I would wholeheartedly recommend it, though make sure to give yourself plenty of time to not only get in (the queues can be lengthy) but also see the whole thing. I was there for a solid three hours and felt that it would have been ideal to go around again, alas time constraints and the allure of a Parisian lunch dragged me away.