The most famous image of Gettysburg was made when a photographer dragged a corpse forty yards up hill to a spot he thought would make the dead man look better, so no one should say this is unprecedented. https://twitter.com/JDiamond1/status/1331455831859191810

It's this one, btw. Alexander Gardner's Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter. The rifle was a prop Gardner brought to Gettysburg to place near bodies when he photographed them.

Since we're on the subject: Gardner wasn't the only Civil War photographer to create fraudulent images at Gettysburg. Mathew Brady showed up almost two weeks after the fighting. He still wanted to sell pictures of the war dead, however, so he had an assistant pose as a corpse.

Most ambitiously, when Peter Weaver photographed Gettysburg four months later, he brought along a dozen living soldiers to play dead. After this photo was taken, every man shown here got up and walked away. The two standing are doctors who operated an embalming firm.

In conclusion: Gettysburg is a great place for photo-ops and grift.