An Australian photographer who was arrested alongside a Belgian model during a nude photoshoot in an ancient Egyptian temple says they meant no disrespect to the local culture.

Jesse Walker, from Sydney, and Belgian model Marisa Papen were interrogated for hours and spent the night in a squalid jail cell in Luxor, Southern Egypt after they were apprehended by a temple guard in April.

Photographs from the controversial shoot snapped for Walker’s company Enki Eyewear and Papen’s personal blog were published this week.

The images show Papen, a well-known nude model, posing completely naked on the grounds of the Luxor temple and also in Cairo with the pyramids as a backdrop.

The photographs have drawn condemnation online from Egyptians accusing them of disrespecting their Islamic culture.

But Walker told Nine.com.au the images were art and not the porn they had been mistaken for.

“It was my fifth time over there in Egypt. So I’m very well aware of the culture over there. It’s a place that I’m very close to and I feel very drawn to.”

“It’s no disrespect to the Egyptian culture because I love the country so much. I do this for the love of art and I do this to get that imagery that no one else can get.”

Papen pictured inside the temple grounds in Luxor moments before she was arrested.

Walker told Nine.com.au he and Papen had gotten caught by authorities at least three times in Giza when guards came across the naked model inside ancient landmarks, but each time they had managed to either bribe or talk their way out of the situation.

“As soon as we would see them (the guards) I would delete the photos because I have software that retrieves data,” Walker said.

“We would play a bit naïve. We would say it’s an art project and the concept is ancient Egypt, the time of the kings and the queens and the pharaohs, which was true,” he said.

“One time, we were in the middle of the desert and this car just came roaring out of the nowhere and there was dust and smoke and sand everywhere. It was the military police and I was yelling at Marisa ‘put your clothes, put your clothes on’.”

But it was in Luxor that their trip almost became disastrously unstuck when they went to a local temple to surreptitiously snap some nude shots.

“We went to one of the temples and there were hordes of tourists around but we found an area where there was these huge pylons and there just happened to be no one there,” Walker said.

“Marisa just whipped off her clothes and we started shooting.”

All of a sudden a temple guard came out of nowhere and started screaming in Arabic, Walker said.

“I was trying to give him some money and he just wasn’t going to go for it,” he said.

The tourist police were called and the pair were marched through the temple and into a room where they were interrogated for hours.

“They thought we were shooting porn because they associate any nudity with porn. They said to Marisa ‘why have you got dirt on your knees?’” Walker said.

Photographer and founder of Enki Eyewear Jesse Walker.

Walker had deleted the photos off his camera but was strip searched by officers who were looking for a camera memory card.

After hours of interrogation the pair were taken to a police station which also doubled as a jail cell, Walker said.

“It was just so horrific. I’ve never seen anything like it. There was one guy just walking around and he was just covered in blood. He had been bludgeoned.

“He had a hole in his head. No-one even cared, it was just standard stuff. There was lots of yelling and screaming and arguing. And just filth. There were flies everywhere.”

At about 3am, Walker and Papen were taken to a courthouse to face a judge and police prosecutors.

“We explained the concept to the judge that it was an art project and we basically told them that Marisa was just topless. We told them she had pants on.”

“The judge let us off with a warning. He said this is an Islamic country and if you do it again we will put you back in jail.”

A very relieved Papen left the country the following day and Walker three days later.

Earlier this week Papen spoke out about her arrest on her blog where she also published images of the trip.

The post prompted the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities to dispute the validity of the images.

“It is probable that the photos are fake or had been taken a long time ago and were recently published,” the ministry was quoted by Gulf News as saying in a statement.

“No such photo session has taken place in any archaeological area.”

Walker said he had read the comments and found them “bizarre”.

“The government likes to deny this stuff to save face but they are definitely not fake. You can clearly see that they’re not fake. They don’t look photoshopped at all.”