“The taste of the beach”, by Gérard de Cortanze

“The taste for the beach begins with childhood, inevitably. I spent all my childhood vacations at the beach. That is to say, my parents did not take vacations in the countryside, hated the mountains, so it was the beach We went camping, but camping in the 50s and 60s was real camping. The beach. introduction, I’m referring here to “Itsi Bitsi, Little bikini”. It’s not a trauma, but to see as a teenager, in those years, suddenly, all these young girls and even my mother in a bikini, but it’s is a cataclysm!”

“You know, the history of the beach is still very, very surprising, the history of the link between the sea and the beach. That is to say that at the start, there was a terrible fear of the beach because behind the beach, there was the sea. In the Middle Ages, the Crusaders did not take boats, they went by land. And then, little by little, in the 18th century, we began to take an interest in it. the beach It was no longer a negative place, the beach then became an ecological side, that is to say the beach was healing. So we start to be interested in the beach. But at the moment we are really interested. at the beach, we open it to potential swimmers in France.” Gerard de Cortanze

The taste of the beach by Gérard de Cortanze, is published by Mercure de France.