Remains of the World War I: War against War by Ernst Friedrich and Two Approaches to Reading Archives

In this paper, I analyze two methods of reading archives: 'against the grain' and 'along the grain'. First one focuses mainly on revealing what is marginalized and omitted in archive's dominant narration. The other carefully studies the logic of an archive itself. As such, reading against the grain allows to reveal victims' forgotten stories, while reading along the grain helps to understand perpetrators' perspective that may further lead to better recognition of the mechanisms of organized violence. I apply both approaches to the album War against War (1924) by Ernst Friedrich, which contains archival photographs from World War I.