At the edge of Indonesia’s Sumba Island, a handful of mangroves turn the changing tide into a work of natural theatre. Through Daniel Kordan’s lens, Walakiri Beach becomes something even more elusive—a landscape suspended between earth, water and sky.
There are landscapes that demand attention, and then there are those that quietly hold it.
On the eastern coast of Sumba, Indonesia, at Walakiri Beach, a small gathering of dwarf mangrove trees rises from the tidal flats. Their trunks curve and twist rather than growing in rigid, vertical lines, their branches stretching outward in gestures that seem almost choreographed. Locals and visitors have come to call them the “Dancing Trees.”(sumbamap.com)
It is a fitting name for a landscape whose appearance is never quite the same twice.
At low tide, the sea retreats across the shoreline, leaving behind expanses of wet sand and shallow pools. The surface catches fragments of the sky, transforming into a natural mirror beneath the trees. As evening approaches, the mangroves become silhouettes—dark, delicate forms against the changing colours of the Sumbanese sky. (Sumba Guide)
This is when Walakiri becomes almost surreal.
The beauty is not necessarily in the scale of the landscape. There are no towering cliffs or monumental rock formations here. Instead, its drama comes from proportion, light and timing: small trees against a seemingly endless horizon; intricate branches against vast skies; reflections that blur the boundary between the physical landscape and its imagined twin.
Photographer Daniel Kordan has found particular poetry in this setting. His photographs of Sumba approach the Dancing Trees almost as one might approach sculpture isolating their expressive forms, allowing negative space to become part of the composition, and using the fleeting light of sunset to heighten their otherworldly quality.
Through his lens, the trees cease to be merely a curious feature of a beach. They become gestures.
A bent trunk becomes a dancer. A reflection becomes a shadow world. A strip of tidal water becomes a second sky.
And perhaps that is what makes Kordan’s interpretation of Sumba so compelling. He does not need to overwhelm the landscape with spectacle. The landscape already contains its own visual language. His photographs simply slow the eye down enough to read it.
There is also something inherently temporal about Walakiri. The scene depends on conditions that are constantly moving: the tide withdrawing from the shore, the wind settling over the water, the sun descending, and the sky changing colour by the minute. The most recognisable images of the Dancing Trees exist within this narrow intersection of elements.
Miss the tide, and the composition changes.
Wait another ten minutes, and the light changes.
A breeze crosses the water, and the perfect reflection disappears.
It is this impermanence that gives the landscape its particular magic. The trees may stand in the same place, but the photograph is never quite waiting there for you.
Beyond their visual appeal, the mangroves are part of a coastal ecosystem, helping stabilise the shoreline and providing habitat for marine life. Their beauty, therefore, is inseparable from their role within the landscape itself. (Walakiri Beach)
Sumba is often celebrated for its dramatic landscapes, traditional villages, distinctive architecture, horses and vast stretches of untouched coastline. Walakiri offers something quieter. It is a study in restraint a place where nature has produced something that looks almost deliberately designed.
Perhaps that is why the Dancing Trees have become such an enduring photographic subject.
They do not simply represent Sumba.
They capture something more universal: the strange beauty of a landscape constantly in motion, even when everything within the frame appears still.
And at sunset, when the water becomes a mirror and the mangroves dissolve into silhouettes, Walakiri seems to suspend itself between two worlds.
For a brief moment, the trees dance, the sea reflects, and Sumba becomes a landscape that feels almost imagined.
