In December 2001, while on assignment in Tokyo, the photographer Lyle Owerko came across a funky old boombox at an outdoor market. He was struck by its bulk and intrigued by its link to a vanished New York of break dancing and graffiti.

"That's when the obsession started," he said recently at his studio in New York. Dozens of the machines, covered in protective Bubble Wrap, were piled in a corner.

Mr. Owerko's interest grew into a book, "The Boombox Project: The Machines, the Music, and the Urban Underground." It features his lovingly detailed close-up photographs of vintage portable stereos, as well as commentary by Spike Lee, L L Cool J and members of the Beastie Boys and the Fugees about the role the devices played in New York's street culture from the late 1970s to the mid-'80s.