Denys Colomb de Daunant

Albin Théodore Denys Colomb de Daunant (21 November 1922 – 22 March 2006) was a French writer, poet, photographer and filmmaker, best known for his work on the multi-award-winning 1953 short film White Mane. An aristocrat and modern dandy, he was an iconic figure of France's rural Camargue region.

The son of Auguste Colomb de Daunant and L. Carenou, Denys Colomb de Daunant was born into a Protestant family in the Gard department of southern France. The Colomb de Daunants were major landowners and ran a number of traditional mas and factories.

During the Second World War, he had to flee France for having insulted a German officer. He attempted to rejoin the Free French Forces in Morocco, but was captured while crossing the Pyrenees and imprisoned.

Returning to the Camargue in 1947, at the age of 25, he purchased the Cacharel mas in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, where he was to live for more than sixty years, transforming it in the process into a rustic horse-riding centre with no running water, electricity, or telephone line. Cacharel became one of the area's best-known manades for both horses and Camargue bulls. Though this remained his base, he travelled a lot and became friends with many of the prominent cultural figures of his time, including Picasso, Chagall, Ernest Hemingway, and Salvador Dalí. He was close to Frédéric Mistral, and contributed to the latter's Occitan language magazine Aïoli.

In 1948 he married Monique Bonis, the granddaughter of Colomb de Daunant's spiritual forebear, iconic Camargue pioneer Folco de Baroncelli-Javon.