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Although we know Walker Evans for his Great Depression images, he also did a body of work on African masks, which where shown at MOMA in 1935 and again in the Louvre in 2007:

Masque DAN le Cote d'Ivoire, 1935

This weekend I went to a talk sponsored by the Denver Public Library and given by Judy Anderson and Ginny Holye, two book artists in their 60s. These two remarkable women have embedded the joys and sorrows of their lives into their collaborative efforts; Anderson conceives the form and printing of the books while Hoyle writes the poetry element. Anderson taught in Japan and mentioned that the Japanese use masks to reveal and become transparent, while Westerners use masks to obscure.

In marked contrast, Frieda Kahlo had little use for masks and painfully bares her interior life and self for all to see, although we sympathize rather than judge, even admire her for it:

The Broken Column (La columna rota), 1944

Or the mask can be functional, as in Augusta Clawson's welding mask donated to the Smithsonian in 1988. Given an undercover assignment at the Swan Island Shipyard in Portland, Oregon, her mission was to find out why women recruited as welders were quitting as soon as they finished their training, which required another invisible mask of intelligence and secrecy. Her two months' experience as a welder became the basis of her 1944 book Shipyard Diary.

Welding Mask, 1943