Sant Khalsa

Sant Khalsa's photographs, sculptures and installations develop from her mindful inquiry into the nature of place and complex environmental and societal issues. Her work is widely shown internationally and has been acquired by permanent museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, National Galleries of Scotland, Nevada Museum of Art, UCR/California Museum of Photography, and others in addition to private collections in the U.S. and Europe. Khalsa is a recipient of fellowships, awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, California Humanities and others. Most recently, she was given the California Arts Council Individual Art Fellowship Legacy Artist Award (2023) for her "leadership in guiding the evolution of our traditional and contemporary cultures,” through a lifetime commitment to art, environment and community. She was also honored as the inaugural recipient of the Society for Photographic Education Insight Award (2012) for her significant contributions to the field of photography.
Her artworks are published in numerous books including two monographs, Crystal Clear || Western Waters (Minor Matters 2022) and Prana: Life with Trees (Griffith Moon/MOAH Lancaster, 2019) and the compilations, Embodied Forest (ecoartspace, 2021), Klett, Wild Visions: Imaging and Imagining the American Wilderness (Yale University Press, November 2022), Photography and Environmental Activism: Visualising the Struggle Against Industrial Pollution (Routledge, May 2022), In the Sunshine of Neglect (Inlandia Institute, 2018), Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment (Skira/Rizzoli, 2011), Art in Action: Nature, Creativity and Our Collective Future (Earth Aware Editions, 2007), Seismic Shift: Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal and California Landscape Photography, 1944 - 1984 (UCR California Museum of Photography, 2011), and Fotofest H2O 04: Celebrating Water (Fotofest, 2004). She is a Professor of Art, Emeritus at California State University, San Bernardino, where she taught for three decades, chaired the Department of Art and Design and was one of the founding faculty of the Water Resources Institute. She lives in Joshua Tree and is founding director of the Joshua Tree Center for the Photographic Arts.