Über Sehen Über Leben. A Photographic Document by Andreas Seibert
Photographer Andreas Seibert began taking portraits of Long Covid and ME/CFS sufferers a year and a half after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. On the one hand, he was motivated by the question of whether and how photography can capture something that does not really take on material form in front of the camera. On the other hand, he assumed that the high number of infections and the associated post-viral diseases would pose a major challenge for the healthcare system and for society as a whole. As the book’s title suggests, this gave rise to a 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.
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.