Initially constituted of wild territories, the beach belonged to the rural world at the beginning of the 19th century. It was occupied by maritime populations and formed an area for work and agricultural production. Still little-known by city-dwellers, it was considered to be the ‘end of the earth’.
In the mid-19th century, painters were the first to take an interest in the beach as a subject of representation, painting its shores and its fishermen. During the same period, hygienist medicine was advocating health retreats at the seaside, and the beach and its picturesque appeal attracted the aristocracy, who built hotels, casinos, spas and villas along its shores. Swimmers took to the sand, and the trend was to contemplate the sea. The first seaside resorts gradually drove people away from the coast. Relegated to the status of “noble savages”, they became a folk attraction.

Developed and cleaned up, the beach became a leisure area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A particular aesthetic emerged with this place and its new uses. Cabins, swimming suits, parasols in pale colours with or without stripes. It's a place for sport and socialising. The beach was a peaceful place to play, have conversations and socialise, a place for the elite.

In the middle of the 20th century, the introduction of paid holidays led to a massive expansion of the seaside experience. The democratisation of holidays led the middle and working classes to discover the coast. Seaside resorts evolved and became accessible to all. The coasts were becoming increasingly urbanised and new tourist concepts were emerging; holiday clubs, naturism and camping. The seaside area underwent a calculated decontextualization and the island model became the norm: palm trees, white sand, turquoise water and blue skies.  As a Polynesian, Hawaiian or Caribbean simulation, the beach and its codes of representation are sliding towards the exotic. This new conception of the beach is seen psychologically and materially as a territory on the margins, a third universe. Users no longer see the beach as an authentic site or a foreign land; it's neither a place to discover the world, nor a place to meet others. It is not a change of scenery, but a space to be used.
The elements that compose the beach environment are also subject to this decontextualization. The most important of these, water, has seen its function as the primary element and habitat of the marine ecosystem pushed aside in favour of a space that welcomes bathers almost exclusively. In the tourist imaginary, the sea has to take on a soft, warm, clean and safe form.

The globalisation that began at the end of the 20th century accentuated the spread of codes for representing the beach, with the Polynesian model predominating. The image of the beach had to correspond to the commercial criteria produced by the tourist industry, i.e. an imaginary paradise and a fictional experience of freedom designed to arouse desire. It is the tourism industry's flagship product, a commercial icon of a consumerist society.

By drawing on the collective imagination and using the imagery of the beach, the ‘Beaches’ series of drawings questions our relationship with the standardised codes of the beach image, the ways in which we use this space and, by extension, its function of social distinction. ‘Beaches’ presents landscapes of beaches chosen because they have in common that they are places that are not paradises. They have been altered by human activity, or are places of exploitation, human trafficking or cemeteries.

On the face of it, the landscapes drawn correspond to the criteria for representing the idealised beach, but a detail in the drawing disturbs the original message.  Combined with the title of the drawing, these clues reveal the reality of a paradise in name only: these beaches are areas devastated by human activity and the tourist industry.

The titles of each drawing are constructed in the same way, associating the name of the place with the term ‘Beach’. The word Beach itself always evokes something positive, but here it is attached to the name of a place that contradicts the use to which the space is actually put.  
The series of drawings uses the technique of colouring, a standardised form of commercial representation that is culturally accessible to as many people as possible. Unlike forms considered more noble, colouring is not a dominant form. It is a leisure activity based on stereotypes.

The idealised surroundings of the beach offer an exotic experience without having to worry about the impacts and actions that take place there. This desensitisation to the beach environment also excludes the possibility of understanding this space as anything other than a place of leisure and makes it possible to forget that the beach does not have the same meaning for everyone around the world.