Dalton Portella creates haunting, unsettling images that combine natural landscape and surroundings, in particular of the East End of Long Island, with industrial, mechanical, and military elements as well as figures, often of children, in particular the artist’s own daughter.  These compositions draw the viewer in for their sheer beauty, then hold one beyond that first aesthetic gaze because of the unexpected -surreal, even- juxtapositions that are represented. Portella has the ability of finding uncommon, sometimes freakish subjects to feature in his work, whether it is a baby doll trapped in a lobster pot or a frozen and darkly stormy beach scene; a picnic table perched at the edge of the ocean or a military tank lumbering behind a young girl on a beach.  Of course, one questions the real occurrence of these images.  Some are in fact captured directly, while others are combined digitally by the artist.  It is left up to the viewer to ponder, to follow the path to a meaning; and as with most captivating art, this is what makes Portella’s photographs endure.