Slides of Girl Partly Nude Investigated : Dispute: Laguna Beach photographer defends shots of 12-year-old model turned over to Irvine police by a processing lab.

Three slides taken by a Laguna Beach photographer at a professional workshop have sparked an investigation of suspected child abuse after a commercial laboratory turned the photos over to the Irvine Police Department.

Marilyn Lennon took slides depicting a 12-year-old female model, nude from the waist up, to Irvine Photo Graphics for printing. The lab decided to alert police after considering the nudity and the age of the subject, according to owner Betty Farrell. She added that Irvine police had asked her about two months ago to contact authorities if the lab received “anything involving nudity of minors.”

Lennon defended the photographs Thursday as having been taken “purely from an artistic point of view. . . . I am pretty upset about it. They are just lovely photographs of her.”

Artists and arts activists, meanwhile, said the situation recalled the widely publicized case of San Francisco art photographer Jock Sturges, whose studio was raided and thousands of negatives confiscated last year after the FBI received a tip from a commercial film processor.

No charges have been filed in the Lennon case, and Irvine police declined to discuss details. “There is a case under investigation involving photographs,” investigator Tracy Jacobson confirmed. However, she added, she is not allowed to discuss specifics of cases involving “suspected child abuse.”

Lennon, a makeup artist and photographer who takes studio portraits for model portfolios, attended a weeklong workshop in June with nationally known art photographer Joyce Tenneson at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop in New Mexico. The course concentrated on human figure photography and made use of several paid models.

Among them was a mother and her 12-year-old daughter, and Lennon took pictures of the pair together and separately. On Tuesday, she took three slides of the girl to the Irvine lab to be printed for her personal portfolio. Previously developed prints of the slides, provided to The Times, show the girl facing the camera with fabric wrapped around her waist, her torso and breasts exposed.

About two hours after dropping the slides off at the lab, Lennon returned home to find a message on her answering machine from Irvine police informing her that they were holding her slides as part of an investigation.

Lennon was later told that the photographs “could be sold to arouse pedophiles,” she said, and that the Santa Fe Police Department had been contacted and urged to investigate the workshop.

Representatives of the Irvine and Santa Fe police departments declined to comment on whether Santa Fe police are investigating the incident. Doug Merriam, managing director of the workshop, said he has been contacted by Irvine police, but not by Santa Fe police.

“I don’t see how I could be guilty of anything under the circumstances,” Lennon said. “This was just kind of a shock to me, that my name is associated with this sort of thing.”

Merriam said that while he has not seen Lennon’s photographs he was present during the sessions and that he is “very confident (the photographs) are in good taste.”

“I can understand California’s position in trying to protect children,” Merriam said, but he emphasized that Tenneson is “one of the most respected fine-art photographers in America.” While Merriam declined to identify the girl’s mother, he said he informed her of the Irvine investigation.

Farrell, owner of Irvine Photo Graphics, said the decision to contact police was not a “value judgment,” but an effort to respond to police requests. “We asked them, ‘Can you take a look at this and advise us as to what to do?’ ” Farrell said. “Protection of the child was the supreme matter.”

Jacobson, the Irvine police investigator, pointed out that commercial film and photographic print processors are required under state law to report any images giving evidence of child abuse or sexual conduct.

G. Ray Hawkins, owner of a prominent Los Angeles photographic gallery that bears his name, said that the use of minors as models is common among professional artists, including painters, sculptors and photographers. “What’s interesting is, only photographers are being harassed,” he said.

Hawkins pointed out the case of Sturges, who was the subject of a 17-month investigation concerning child pornography. Sturges’ work, which often features nude women and children, has been exhibited widely in major galleries and museums. The case arose in April, 1990, after a processing lab in San Francisco called the FBI to report that it received negatives depicting nude young girls in suggestive poses.

Federal and local agents entered Sturges’ studio and confiscated thousands of negatives, along with photographic equipment, sparking widespread outrage among arts and civil rights activists. A grand jury last month refused to indict Sturges.

Tenneson, like Sturges, often employs partially clad young girls in her work. She was not available for comment, but Hawkins said that her use of nudity has not been a source of controversy in the past.