“As a little kid I’d always want to cry when it came time to leave,” says photographer Matt Propert about his family’s beach house on Delaware’s Fenwick Island. “Growing up in Virginia, it was the one place where we went on vacation. I have fond memories about those early days spent at the beach getting sunburned and salty. It was all so simple.”

In his teens and early 20s, Propert’s fascination with the cottage faded. “I didn’t know how to appreciate the absolute quiet. It’s a place where the lack of distractions forces you to really take a look at yourself,” he says. But when his grandfather, who had designed the house, fell ill, Fenwick became a priority again. “Following his