Marketing The Dead of Antietam: Photographs of Death as a Cultural Commodity

In October 1862 photographer and entrepreneur Mathew Brady launched an exhibition of photographs taken by Alexander Gardner at the Battle of Antietam. The exhibition, held at Brady’s New York City gallery and titled The Dead at Antietam, was the first of its kind in America.1 Among the photographs was Gardner’s Dead of Stonewall Jackson’s Brigade by the Rail Fence on the Hagerstown Pike (Fig. 1). The powerful image presents a startling glimpse of the battle. The contorted bodies of three Confederate soldiers lie next to a rail fence. Two of the three soldiers’ faces are not visible. Their legs flail in various directions, as if barely connected to their torsos. The soldier on the left is so twisted that he appears to be headless, his legs jutting out toward the viewer as his upper body pushes against the fence. His left arm reaches up, frozen in time as if he is reaching for a weapon or raising a hand to beg for assistance. On the right side of the photograph, another soldier is even more knotted. One leg bends as if the man was interrupted while trying to rise, his arm fixed forever in a cradled position against the fence. His head is almost indistinguishable from the foliage into which he has fallen, and his lower leg blends into the figure beside him. He still wears his hat. In the center of the group lies the only soldier whose face we might recognize. The agony of death demonstrated in the soldier’s twisted expression means that any small relief the viewer might