David Alan Harvey's Personal Photo Project from Rio de Janeiro David Alan Harvey's "Based on a True Story" is an unusual mix of classic documentary images of Rio de Janeiro and casual shots of Mr. Harvey's personal experiences there, including photographs of his "muses" - several Brazilian women who assisted him. The photographs of favelas, the drug trade and the rich and the powerful are strong, but Brazil has been documented in great depth by many before, including by Mr. Harvey himself for National Geographic. Yet this might be the first time his thoughts and experiences have been so nakedly revealed and shared. Mr. Harvey, who is hardly shy or particularly private, wanted to create something more than just a photojournalism book. "I just took it one step further by actually putting in a little novella on top of the documentary photography," said Mr. Harvey, a member of Magnum who has been shooting for more than four decades. The straight story is in National Geographic, of course, and I've done very straight stories on Rio and on Brazil before. But this one was an attempt to experiment and have a little fun, playing around with juxtapositions and making the story a bit of a mystery. It's one that readers have to figure out, since the book was designed to be taken apart and re-edited into different narratives. And he'll have a chance to see if it stumps his subjects, since he is in Rio this week sharing his work and talents with the residents of some of the poor neighborhoods where he photographed. On Saturday he gave a talk and distributed free copies at a youth soccer game. He is scheduled to distribute free books in five other favelas and hold a free photo workshop for teenagers in an effort he describes as "a payback and pay forward gesture to the Rio community." The 2,500 copies he is giving away in Rio are printed in a magazine format. The original version of "Based on a True Story" was a handsome, handmade limited-edition boxed volume that encouraged the reader to re-edit it in different ways. It was published last fall by Burn, Mr. Harvey's online magazine which has employed innovative approaches to publishing photographic work on the Web and, more recently, in books. "Based on a True Story" was named last year's Best Photography Book in the 2013 POYi competition. Although the 600 signed limited editions originally sold for $95 - and now fetch as much as $500 - Mr. Harvey planned from the beginning to publish a free version to distribute in Rio de Janeiro. An additional 2,500 copies of the magazine-like book will be sold on Burn for $24 each. Mr. Harvey says photojournalists have to make things as discernible as possible as fast as possible. But with "Based on a True Story," he wanted to see what would happen if viewers had to sort out the story on their own. The book is bursting with sex, danger, passion and sensuality. It will be interesting to find out how his Brazilian audience reacts to his blend of fact and fiction. His first event, a lecture and free book signing at the photography school Ateliê da Imagem, went well and was "a big warm" according to Mr. Harvey. A spontaneous giveaway at a youth soccer match resulted in some children spreading the book out on the ground to look at it, while others held the books close to them and a few set theirs down on nearby steps. Several more events are planned for the next week. The book is a result of what he calls his quarter-century "love affair" with the migration of the Spanish and Portuguese cultures to the Americas. It is also the product of a lifelong dedication to living fully, deeply and sensually. Though not wholly factual, it rings true for Mr. Harvey and his many followers. "The reason that I called it "Based on a True Story" - and the word "Rio" never appears anywhere in the book - is because I didn't want even to give the impression that I was trying to make a pure photojournalistic documentary," he said. I didn't want to confuse anybody, so the word Rio is not even in there. At all. At any point. Follow @davidalanharvey, @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter.