Both Henson and the gallery owner Roslyn Oxley went to ground yesterday. Henson is understood to be distressed by the planned charges. In dramatic scenes, police took his pictures in packing cases to a truck outside the gallery. The Rose Bay police commander, Superintendent Allan Sicard, told media there: "This morning police have attended the gallery and executed a search warrant and seized several items depicting a child under the age of 16 years of age in a sexual context."

The Herald understands that previous Henson works are also being examined by the police. Henson has been producing similar works for years without police intervention, and they have been lauded worldwide, as long ago as the 1995 Venice Biennale. But police raided the gallery on Thursday night following a complaint. It has emerged that complaint came from Hetty Johnston, of the child sexual assault advocacy group Bravehearts. "I did make a complaint yesterday, absolutely," Ms Johnston said. "I asked them to prosecute, both the gallery and the photographer, but I'd like to see the parents as well looked in to. What parent in their right mind would allow their 12- or 13-year-old to strip off naked and display themselves all over the internet? That's not in the interests of the child. What's happening here is that the arts community have felt that they've been able to get away with this under the guise of art for a number of years, and I think this is the community drawing a line in the sand and saying, 'Enough's enough'." Earlier yesterday the gallery released a statement: "After much consideration we have decided to withdraw a number of works from the current Bill Henson exhibition that have attracted controversy. The current show, without the said works, will be reopened for viewing in coming days."

The Herald revealed details of the exhibition on Thursday, following an early viewing. The photographs of naked children comprised about a third of the exhibition. Most of the shots were taken from the waist up, though the genitals of the female model are visible in one image. Politicians, including Kevin Rudd, condemned the exhibition, and talkback radio lines ran hot.

"I find them absolutely revolting," Mr Rudd told the Nine Network. "Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff - frankly, I don't think there are any - just allow kids to be kids." But the prominent gallery owner Anna Schwartz said: "It's a dark day for Australian culture in my view. It is an indictment of a culture when an artist of the integrity and stature of Bill Henson isn't free to show his work." Although Henson could not be reached for comment yesterday, he told the Herald this week he had chosen to work with children at the beginning of puberty because they were "half in childhood, half in the adult world" and this "creates a floating world of expectation and uncertainty". He told the Herald in 2006: "It's an impossibly oversimplified notion, this 'loss of innocence'. It's not like you cross a painted line on the floor; it's a progression."

Henson's work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, the High Court, and the Guggenheim in New York. Paul Bibby and Erik Jensen