In 1956 W. Eugene Smith, a successful photojournalist for Life magazine, visited Pittsburgh to photograph the city for writer Stefan Lorant, who was working on a book intended to celebrate the town's bicentennial two years later.

What started as an assignment burgeoned into an obsession. He took nearly 17,000 photographs of the city; only a handful were exhibited in his lifetime, and the project nearly cost him his career.

Strapped for cash, Mr. Smith retreated to a ramshackle building in New York City's wholesale flower district to salvage his Pittsburgh project.

The building, on Sixth Avenue between 28th and 29th streets, was home to Hall Overton, one of the great unsung jazz heroes. It was also a crash pad for painters, sundry musicians, squatters and their associates. Musicians such as Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Bill Evans would stop in for late-night jam sessions along with dozens of other talented jazz players time forgot.

With his Pittsburgh project in shambles, Mr. Smith retreated inward, documenting the life of the building with equal obsession. He took more than 40,000 pictures of the loft and strung the space with microphones, compulsively recording snippets of conversations, practice sessions, late-night radio shows and even the sounds of Sonny Clark nearly overdosing on heroin while a record of Edna St. Vincent Millay reading her poetry spun in the background.

"Pittsburgh was a symphony whereas Jazz Loft is a collection of lyrical songs," said Sam Stephenson, who has studied Mr. Smith since 1997. His "The Jazz Loft Project" features these intimate photographs and select transcriptions of the tapes.

Mr. Stephenson wrote "Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh Project" and was a co-curator of the 2001 exhibition of Mr. Smith's city photography at Carnegie Museum of Art.

He spent 11 years culling Mr. Smith's massive archives, including nearly 4,000 hours of tape. This labor of love culminated not only in the book but also in the creation of the Jazz Loft Project, hosted by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The website, www.jazzloftproject.org, continues to research Mr. Smith's New York years.

The highlight of the book is the photographs of musicians in the passions of playing. In one photo, Monk is leaning back -- cigarette dangling from his mouth -- just as he lifts his right hand off the keyboard. He is drenched in shadow, but the light catches his face creating the stark contrast that distinguishes Mr. Smith's work.

You will also find arresting pictures of Zoot Sims, Mr. Overton and Salvador Dali, who stopped by the loft at least once. Also featured in the book are the steeply angled photos Mr. Smith snapped from his fifth-floor window of flower wholesalers and passers-by.

The transcripts of the tapes are a little less successful. You may find yourself yearning to hear the actual sound, which you can at the Jazz Loft website.

However, within the transcripts are gems such as the story of Game 1 of the 1960 World Series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees, a humorous exchange with a cop admiring Mr. Smith's photos, and a transcript of late-night radio host Long John Nebel reading a telegram from Mr. Smith about how he crossed color lines to donate blood for an African-American child while on assignment in the South.

Mr. Stephenson also includes a formidable collection of minutiae -- weather reports, news, a Metropolitan Opera schedule.

"History is told from the point of view of what is documented," he said. "If we learn to value the everyday occurrences rather than only the sensational, extraordinary things, we can learn to be more humane and respectful." In his wild and chaotic manner, Mr. Smith did that. That's something we can learn from:

"Pay attention to your elders, your grandparents, your neighbors. Don't write them off."

Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.