Hi, friends! It's me, Peter Garritano (@petergarritano), an NYC-based photographer sharing work from my ongoing project, “Dacha.” The project’s title comes from the Russian concept of a rural second home— a place where families retreat from their daily lives to a simpler, agrarian life. Set first in that physical escape, the work explores the experience of a further, mystical escape into the children’s imaginations, their other second homes. Using my own childhood farm in Vermont as the backdrop, the children pictured do their part to steer the narrative, building their world away with the animals, land, and dacha as their clay. The work seeks to consider the value of that imaginative experience, those discovered worlds, and the formative connections developed therein.