Sandra Eleta is an artist and photographer. Eleta was born in Panama City in Republic of Panama on September 4, 1942, as Sandra Eleta Boyd. Eleta studied Fine Arts at Finch College and then later studied Social Investigation in The New School of Social Research in New York. Her study of Social Investigation lead her to tell the life stories of a variety of different people in varying social classes throughout Latin America. In the 1970s, she took courses at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York with Ken Heyman and George Tice, who were both photographers. She then went on to teach at the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica. She lived and worked in Portobelo, Panama for many years, since the mid-1970s.