Photographer Bill Henson has broken his silence to launch a defence of his controversial art, which was decried earlier this year as verging on child pornography.
An exhibition by Henson was pulled from the walls of a Sydney art gallery in May, when police considered but did not lay charges over the show which included images of a naked 12-year-old girl.
Henson says the girl, and her family, remain strong supporters of the photographic work and he also only regretted the public furore it had caused.
"(The girl's parents) are fine because they believe in what they believe in," the Melbourne-based world-renowned photographer has told Fairfax.
"They see their involvement in the work as a good thing, a positive thing.
"(And) unlike everyone else, I do have first-hand experience of working with these people (child models) - working with them for years and seeing them grow up.
"I see their work with me only giving them a sense of pride and pleasure in later life."
Henson said he had been doing similar work for 30 years, and he was often in a position of asking parents whether they would allow their children to be photographed.
Some said no, it was not for them, he said, while others leapt at the opportunity.
"All you can do is give them a card and say `look just Google me, and I'd be very interested in photographing your daughter or son'," he said.
The mother of the 12-year-old girl at the centre of the Henson controversy said the photographs had captured a "beautiful" moment.
"I was absolutely in awe of those first proof images and the detail that was captured," she said.
"He then showed us one blown-up picture ... it was so beautiful, it brought tears to my eyes."
Henson conceded his choice of image for the flyer to advertise the Sydney exhibition - an full-length almost nude image - was a mistake, but to him it remained the image that was the "most alive".
"It strikes me that beneath the panic and nonsense there was the basic commonsense and decency of the vast majority of people," he also says.
"There were people who said to me this sort of thing is peculiar to Australia and I tell them of course it is not.
"These things can happen in any society, in any part of the world at anytime - and they have.
"Perhaps we are a little more prone to it as far as the arts are concerned. At times I think Western culture has a tenuous grasp on this continent. It's like the topsoil, very easily blown away."