Jacob, a graduate student studying the history of photography, finds a biscuit tin filled with mysterious old photographs among the belongings of his deceased Japanese-American grandmother. Shortly after, in his new apartment in Brooklyn, he accidentally discovers a brown envelope hidden in a drawer. Inside are four strange yet deeply intimate photographs from the 1930s depicting people crossing racial and cultural boundaries.

Captivated by these images, Jacob begins an investigation and discovers they are unpublished works by Edward Takahashi, an obscure photographer who died alone in 1956 and was forgotten by history. To uncover the story behind them, Jacob visits art galleries in Soho. However, when the owner of a particular gallery sees the photographs, he becomes visibly shaken and aggressively attempts to buy them for a large sum of money while remaining completely evasive about their origin.

Deeply suspicious of the owner's behavior, Jacob refuses the offer and leaves. Overlapping this mystery with his own feelings toward his grandmother’s photographs, Jacob embarks on a journey to unravel the memories sealed within these four "suspended" images and to uncover the truth of the world left behind by the forgotten photographer.