No one knows for sure who first uttered the phrase ‘the camera doesn’t lie’. But whoever it was (the Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson was already referring to the saying as an “old melodrama principle” in 1896) wasn’t being completely honest. From its very inception, the camera has relied on disguise and cover-up to expose the truth. “In the first experiments which I made for obtaining portraits from the life,” according to John William Draper, the US inventor who is thought to have captured the very first photos of living subjects, “the face of the sitter was dusted with a white powder, under an idea that otherwise no impression could be obtained.” In other words, in order to preserve a true likeness of someone, he or she first had to be fitted with a mask.

To this day, the camera and the mask continue to collaborate in the search for truths that are otherwise difficult to face. A series of images created as part of a photography project in India has gone viral this week, revealing just how potent a partnership the camera and mask still is. The striking photos are the brainchild of Sujatro Ghosh, a Delhi-based photographer, who believes that Indian society values the lives of cattle more highly than the lives of women.