Elton John defended a picture taken by award-winning photographer Nan Goldin on Wednesday, after it was pulled from a British gallery by police.

The picture, showing two young girls naked, one sitting with her legs apart, was taken from a gallery in Northumbria over concerns it amounted to child pornography.

U.S. photographer Nan Goldin, shown after a receiving a prize from Sweden's Hasselblad Foundation in March, has often courted controversy in her work. U.S. photographer Nan Goldin, shown after a receiving a prize from Sweden's Hasselblad Foundation in March, has often courted controversy in her work.
(Peter Widing/Scanpix/Associated Press)

John owns the photograph, titled Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing and had lent it to the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead for an exhibit of Goldin's work.

"The photograph exists as part of the installation as a whole and has been widely published and exhibited throughout the world," John said on his website.

It is part of an installation called Thanksgiving that includes 149 images.

"It can be found in the monograph of Ms. Goldin's works entitled The Devil's Playground (Phaidon, 2003), has been offered for sale at Sotheby's New York in 2002 and 2004, and has previously been exhibited in Houston, London, Madrid, New York, Portugal, Warsaw and Zurich without any objections of which we are aware," he said.

Goldin, born in Washington, D.C., has been taking pictures since the age of 15 and her work is often frank and sexually explicit.

Northumbria police said the photo was taken from the exhibit "to assess whether or not an offence had been committed."

Both Goldin and the gallery have declined to comment.

In 2001, Goldin's work aroused controversy when it was displayed at the Saatchi Gallery in London.

Police demanded removal of one of the photographs, saying it was indecent, but the gallery refused and officials backed down, saying there was little chance of a conviction in the case.

Goldin's 1989 book, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, displayed scenes from New York's gay subculture, scenes of drug use and intimate shots of her own sexuality.

She was awarded Sweden's Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography earlier this year in recognition of her contribution to the field of documentary photography.

Goldin now divides her time between London, Paris and New York and had a major retrospective of her work at the Pompidou Centre in 2002.

With files from the Associated Press