According to aws documentation you can omit the open tracking pixel by doing the following. I have done both approaches.
There are two ways to omit the open tracking pixel from your emails. The first method is to send the email without specifying a configuration set. Alternatively, you can specify a configuration set that is not configured to publish data about open events.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/faqs-metrics.html
But this doesn't seem to do the trick. I checked e-mail headers and the open pixel is always there.