french photographer david bertram has created an intimate photographic series entitled ‘claytime’. the collection of images picture ‘portraits of  self-portraits’ as each of the twelve sitters wear self-formed clay masks of their own likeliness, visualized within their homes by the artist. In ‘claytime’, bertram deconstructs the conception of portraiture in art as necessitating a clear view of the sitter’s eyes in order to see his/her ‘inner truth’. the series is the photographer’s investigation of this particular photographic staple, offering a psychologically focused approach enabled through the use of the individual’s own materialized perception of themselves in combination with a particularly evocative setting. bertram’s work is informed by an exercise in psychoanalysis in which the patient is asked to model his/her own face from a piece of clay in order to unconsciously bring to light his/her own interaction with his/her traits, fears, complex and psychic identity for his/her analyst.  

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