A picture by the respected New York photographer Nan Goldin was at the centre of a police investigation into a show at a leading British art gallery yesterday.

Officers seized an exhibit from the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead last Thursday, responding to concern from the management that it might breach child pornography laws.

Northumbria Police and the Baltic refused to identify the artist or the work involved, but it is understood to be an image by Goldin. She was one of several artists whose work was the subject of a recent police investigation in France into depictions of child sexuality .

Thanksgiving, her exhibition at the Baltic, opened last Thursday and is billed as a “micro-retrospective of her career”. Visitors enter it through black curtains and see images taken by the artist between 1973 and 1999.

Goldin ran away from home as a child after her elder sister’s suicide and has used photography to document and preserve the incidents and people in her life ever since. She gained a reputation as a chronicler of the lives of alcoholics, drug addicts and Aids sufferers, producing work of startling intimacy. She has since diversified into landscapes and dramatically lit still lives. She has photographed many of her friends and lovers taking drugs, making love, arguing, dying, fighting or simply waking up in the morning. She was admitted to rehab in the 1990s, a period that she recorded in characteristically unflinching detail.

A source close to the gallery said: “The police investigation centres on a photograph of a little girl which is inside a book. It wasn’t actually going to be displayed but was part of the wider body of work in the exhibition. The managers were concerned about it and called the police in to ask their advice.” Officers from the Northumbria force arrived at the gallery, a converted flour mill on the banks of the Tyne, as it was about to close after curators raised concerns with centre managers about the exhibit.

The image is now being examined by Northumbria Police and the Crown Prosecution Service to determine whether it is legal under the Protection of Children Act 1978.

Peter Doroshenko, director of the Baltic, referred inquiries to Northumbria Police.

A police spokeswoman said: “The circumstances around who may have been involved in the production of the image and who may have owned it or owns it forms part of the investigation.” She added: “We attended the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead last Thursday at the invitation of the management who were seeking advice about an item for an exhibition prior to it going on public display. This item is being assessed and Northumbria Police, in consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, is investigating.”

Last year Henry-Claude Cousseau, 60, director of the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris, was investigated over paintings, drawings and video-tapes by modern artists shown in Bordeaux in 2000.

Magistrates in Bordeaux placed Mr Cousseau under formal investigation after a complaint from a child defence group. The exhibition, called Presumed Innocent, was described as an “exploration of the ambiguities of childhood” as seen by 80 artists.

Works alleged to show, or hint at, child sexuality or abuse included one picture by Goldin as well as others by Annette Messager, Christian Boltanski, Mike Kelley, Cindy Sherman, Tony Oursler, Marlene Dumas and Carsten Höller.

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