There is nothing inherently wrong with publishing grotesqueness. In a strictly utilitarian ethic, it can always serve as a deterrent, or as a teaching aid of some kind. For those a bit muddled in their utilitarian ethics, they might complain that it lends an non-dignifying quality to the affair, or that it just seems....unseemly.
Deontic ethics would also not see this as terribly problematic in that it cannot be a universal law subscribed to by all rational beings that such photographs must never be published. The photo passes the means/end test as well, meaning that it doesn't use a human for one's own ends, but that it treats humans AS an end. What we see are two corpses which are ethically eliminated from all the conceivable proscriptions of deontic ethics. Instead, it would fall to the smaller subset of moralistic reasoning to decide if the pictures are only in bad taste or if they usurp the dignity of the person to whom the bodies belonged.
In fact, using another key principle of deontic ethics, that being the Good Will, one could argue that publishing such a photo might serve to reduce the possibility that others will meet the same fate. One should render assistance when it is reasonable and convenient to do so in keeping with Good Will. This could be rendering assistance, albeit before the fact.
To help sort it out if you are still on the fence, what about the photo of the soldier carrying the lifeless body of the young Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, out of the surf three years ago or so? Most would say that such images serve to galvanize a disinterested public, or worse, an indifferent one. It is the duty of every adult to be apprised of reality, including the unpleasantness and misfortune of others. We are not duty-bound to respond, necessarily, but when we can....we ought.
