WHEN W. EUGENE SMITH WALKED OUT ON HIS CONTRACT WITH LIFE magazine in 1954, he left behind not only a big paycheck but also some great perks, including first class travel to just about anywhere he wanted to go. When he jettisoned the corporate world, which irked his streetwise sensibilities, the photographer turned to a life in one of New York's hidden subcultures.

Smith moved into a loft building in New York City's Flower District, which was also home to a jazz aficionado who opened his space to the cream of the jazz world. Located in a non-residential neighborhood, there were no restrictions on noise levels at any time of the day or night. And this was a time that saw the biggest names in Jazz doing their stuff in the city: Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans - these are just a few among many who congregated at the Jazz Loft.

Left: Thelonius Monk leading a jam session. Right: White Rose Bar sign from Smith's window. All photographs by W. Eugene Smith. Courtesy of the W. Eugene Smith Archive at the Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. © The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith.

Smith photographed jam sessions and the comings and goings of musicians, artists, writers and others who flocked there - including Robert Frank, Salvador Dali, Norman Mailer and Diane Arbus - as well as photography students, pimps, prostitutes, cops and drug dealers. He also wired the building for sound and recorded not only the performances but also the music of daily life as it unfolded. All told Smith exposed over 40,000 frames of 35mm film and taped roughly 4,000 hours of music and sound between 1957 and 1965.

Wednesday night at the invitation of The W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund, I attended a tour of the exhibition led by Sam Stephenson, a writer and scholar from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, where the Jazz Loft Project is based. He spent 13 years working with the material to bring the exhibition and book to light. The exhibition includes vintage prints made by Smith himself, as well as hours of recorded music that can be heard on headphones, archival materials including the 300 mm Canon telephoto lens used by Smith and other objects and ephemera.

The photographs show the extent to which Smith was subsumed by the world he inhabited. While his legendary photo essays done for LIFE explored socially significant subjects from within, the Jazz Loft project is another story. In viewing the photographs on display, it quickly becomes evident that the photographer was not simply aiming his lens at his subject; it's more as if the subject flowed into a lens - and through doors and windows - that were always open.

In his introductory remarks, David Friend, Vanity Fair's editor of creative development, who served as LIFE magazine's director of photography during the 1990s said, "Most of us know W. Eugene Smith for the pioneering photo essays he did for LIFE - such as The Spanish Village and Minamata. And he was peerless for his views on how photography can be used for the public good. But here, in his nonstop photography of the building at 821 Sixth Avenue, we see a completely different side of him - the crazy, wild, bohemian life he lived in the 1950s and 60s."

Sam Stephenson spoke in detail about the archive, which is housed at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. The selection on view, most of which have never before been displayed, include both work prints and master prints. The master prints were created by Smith as reference for exposure and quality control for future printing. The work prints, more casually produced, are often hard to distinguish from the master prints. With that in mind, the exhibition becomes a must for any photographer who spends time in the darkroom.

Left: W. Eugene Smith at his fourth floor window overlooking Sixth Avenue. Right: Jazz Loft interior.

Stephenson also talked about the notable photographers who came to the loft, including Robert Frank., who referred to the fourth floor window where Smith captured the whirling activity on the sidewalk below as his "proscenium arch on the theater of life." The exhibition includes a number of images Smith titled From My Window, whose views beyond the dark, insular space throw the claustrophobic atmosphere inside the loft into high relief.

Speaking for the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund, Robert Stevens talked about the photographer's obsessive dedication to the subject at hand, saying, "Smith had a passionate commitment that might seem naive today. His belief was that he was really onto something and that his work would make a difference." He went on to say that this was not something that can be taught in schools, and that is why the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund was set up - to help young photographers who are following the tradition of Smith's concerned photography.

The Jazz Loft Project continues at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center through May 22, 2010. Please visit the website for information and hours. The exhibition tour continues at the Chicago Cultural Center, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, among other venues. The Jazz Loft Project book (Knopf 2009) is available in bookstores and online.

W. Eugene Smith is best known as a pioneering photojournalist who created seminal LIFE Photo essays such as Spanish Village (1950) and Nurse Midwife (1951) as well as combat images from World War II. Smith's Minamata (1973) is considered to be one of the most important photo books of all time. The Jazz Loft endeavor is his largest body of work, reflecting his passionate assertion that music and theater were his greatest influences. But the work is virtually unknown-the tapes have not been played since they were archived following Smith's death in 1978 and few of the photographs have been published or exhibited.

Jazz Loft Project director Sam Stephenson has been studying the life and work of Smith since 1997. He has authored two books on Smith, Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh Project (W.W. Norton & Company in association with the Center for Documentary Studies, 2001) and W. Eugene Smith (Phaidon 55, 2001), and curated a traveling exhibition of Smith's work organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. He is working on a biography of Smith, Picture Paradise, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Dan Partridge, the Jazz Loft Project research associate, has worked with the loft materials since 2003.

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