Which photographer's New York gallery exhibited The Dead of Antietam in 1862?

Mathew Brady’s New York gallery exhibited The Dead of Antietam in 1862.

The exhibition opened in October, shortly after the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862. Brady had sent Alexander Gardner and James Gibson to photograph the battlefield, and their images documented the unusually large number of dead left in the open countryside.

A common mix-up is confusing the gallery owner with the photographers who made many of the images. Brady organized and presented the exhibition under his name, but Gardner took a substantial number of the photographs. Brady’s studio relied on numerous assistants, so not every image associated with “Brady” was personally taken by Brady.

The exhibition was shocking to many visitors because Americans had rarely seen war’s aftermath represented so directly. Earlier wartime images often softened or idealized combat; Brady’s display confronted viewers with corpses and battlefield destruction. Antietam itself produced more than 23,000 killed, wounded, or missing in a single day, making the photographs a landmark in the public history of the Civil War.