A debate over censorship versus art raged in Australia on Wednesday, nearly a week after police shut down an exhibit by a leading Australian photographer and confiscated portraits of nude teenagers.

The exhibit by Bill Henson was shut down before it could even open last Thursday night. Since then, two other galleries in New South Wales state have removed his work from their walls. Police said Wednesday they are still investigating whether the photographs violate obscenity laws.

“We’re considering what options we’ve got, and we’re doing that according to law,” New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

The raid on Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery came after some people complained about photographs of naked 12- and 13-year-old boys and girls. Police on Friday seized 20 photographs from the gallery and said they were seeking to interview the subjects of the photos and their parents.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd dismissed the photos as “absolutely revolting” and child advocacy group Bravehearts labeled them child pornography and called for Henson and the gallery to be prosecuted.

Henson, 52, a renowned artist whose work is displayed in galleries around the world, has not spoken publicly since the controversy erupted.

But his supporters have rallied around him. Prominent members of the arts community, including actress Cate Blanchett, and politicians have decried the police actions as censorship.

“The potential prosecution of one of our most respected artists is no way to build a creative Australia and does untold damage to our cultural reputation,” Blanchett and 42 others said in an open letter to the prime minister released Tuesday. Other signatories included writer Peter Goldsworthy, playwright Michael Gow and filmmaker Ana Kokkinos.

“The intention of the art is not to titillate or to gratify perverse sexual desires, but rather to make the viewer consider the fragility, beauty, mystery and inviolability of the human body,” the letter said.

Henson’s work, known for its use of light and dark shading, encompasses a wide range of subjects _ landscapes, cloudscapes, suburban and rural life, young people and old people.

“They’re all vehicles for a whole set of feelings to do with what it means to be in transition,” Judy Annear, senior curator for photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, told the AP. “That’s why he has often photographed young people, because they are the most obvious to be in transition.”

In 2004-05, her gallery held a major retrospective of the last 30 years of Henson’s work. More than 65,000 people viewed the exhibit _ and not a single person complained.

“A debate is good but it needs to be rational,” Annear said. “There’s a lot of emotional heat in this one.”

She has seen the latest exhibit and calls it “the most still, the most classical, the most formal” of Henson’s work.

The investigation widened this week when police contacted the Newcastle Regional Art Gallery, north of Sydney, in relation to four Henson works. A council-run gallery in Albury, a town south of Sydney, also has removed three of Henson’s photographs and is discussing with police whether there are legal issues with them.

Malcolm Turnbull, a senior member of the opposition Liberal party who owns two of Henson’s works, a sunset and a face in profile, condemned the police actions.

“I think we have a culture of great artistic freedom in this country and I don’t believe the vice squad’s role is to go into art galleries,” he told reporters Wednesday.