This is a fascinating engagement with the work and its treatment of its subjects. I was not aware of Gupta or Angst before reading your article, and I’m writing this without having the book in front of me, so please forgive any misapprehensions in my speculation below.

I wonder if the handmade book’s heightening of tactile pleasure and sense of control from the coptic binding (choosing between displaying just one page or two facing pages) doesn’t function to substitute a sense of power and control for any horror or pathos the viewer may feel from a particular image. The subjects are trapped in freeze-frame prisons, while the viewer can move freely through the scenes of despair and posed models, staying only as long on any one scene as is desirable.

(Incidentally, the Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar satirized the touristification of Calcutta’s poverty in the story “Advice for Tourists” from the book “Around the Day in Eighty Worlds” (complete with stills from Louis Malle’s film “Calcutta”).