Über Sehen Über Leben. A Photographic Document by Andreas Seibert
A year and a half after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Andreas Seibert began taking portraits of people living with Long Covid and ME/CFS. On the one hand, he was motivated by the question of whether and how photography can capture something that has no visible material form in front of the camera. On the other hand, he anticipated that the high number of infections and the resulting post-viral illnesses would pose major challenges for healthcare systems and societies as a whole. As the book’s title, “Über Sehen Über Leben. A Photographic Document”, suggests, this gave rise to a 424-page photographic work “about seeing” and “about life.”
For two and a half years, Andreas Seibert travelled around Switzerland to photograph over eighty people affected by post-viral diseases — working slowly, empathetically and precisely with an analog camera, always trusting photography, with its objectivity and integrity, to reveal subtle traces, muted hints in the faces of those affected that point to the social upheavals their illnesses have caused.
Andreas Seibert chronicles the stories of the people portrayed in the book in extensive, detailed texts. These accounts touch on suffering and happiness, hope and disappointment, professional and financial fears and hardships, friendships and separations, support and love; in addition, they describe a system that is meant to help people in great need, yet for various reasons all too often fails to do so.
The book officially premiered at Literaturhaus Zürich on May 5, 2026.
Photographer / Author: Andreas Seibert
With texts from Prof. Milo Puhan / Long Covid,
Prof. Kaspar Staub / Pandemics,
Young EMERG / ME/CFS
Reflections: Cristina Amrein
Proofreading (German) Markus Zehentbauer, Translation and proofreading (English) Helen Ferguson
Design: so+ba tokyo / zurich
Format: 280 × 238mm, 11 × 9.4 in
424 pages, 98 photographs, hardcover
German / English, 2025
ISBN 978-3-033-11102-8
CHF 48.00
The book is available in stores and can also be ordered directly from the website Über Sehen Über Leben. A Photographic Document by Andreas Seibert.