Ingmar Licht collects messages from a bygone era. Shopping lists, letters or ads which people put in books and then forgot about. The senders of these bookmarks are long gone because the literature comes from estates that the relatives wanted to get rid of. Ingmar Licht sells these books. This has become his job after almost anything in life went wrong. Alcohol, bankruptcy, looking in trash cans for returnable bottles. He tried to hide for a long time, but that's different now. "Seen in the light" is a film about seeing and being seen. Ingmar Licht observes the lives of others with an alert eye, just as he explores the stories behind the notes, the postcards or newspaper clippings, he discovers in the old books. - He wants to show himself, despite and because of his story.