This Much is True weaves together Elm’s energetic snapshots and dreamlike landscapes into an original body of work that employs a raw yet playful photographic language. Through this approach, Elm reflects on life as he experiences it—at home and abroad, at this particular moment in time, shaped by his age, circumstances, and surroundings.

The images move freely between faraway places and local experiences, icebergs, swimming pools and deserts. South Asian workers in Dubai, a marble quarry in Carrara, and an industrial pipe system outside Mumbai, alongside tourists photographing the Mona Lisa, graffiti on the separation barrier, and a masked police force in Copenhagen. These scenes are assembled into a fragmented yet coherent visual narrative that feels simultaneously global and deeply personal.

Like many of his generation, Elm navigates a constant storm of information, alternative ways of living, and endless temptations. The images emerge from a desire to understand the many facets of reality and a compulsion to push toward its edges. By refusing hierarchies between the extraordinary and the everyday, the book presents the world as a single, shifting landscape.

Elm’s pseudo-documentary approach offers a selective record of lived experience: he captures what feels significant in the moment and preserves it for later reflection. Like a stamp collector filling an album, Elm gathers impressions until an image of a world he can understand — and feel at home in — begins to take shape.

(The Ice Plant, 2017) was nominated for the Aperture/Paris Photo First Book Award (2017) and the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Book Award (2017).