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Stanford Chen was born in Oakland, California on May 15, 1947. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in journalism in 1969 and began his newspaper career as a reporter for the Bellingham Herald in Bellingham, Washington, while also writing an environmental column for the paper. He also worked as the sports editor and later as a staff photographer. He met his wife, Beth Erickson, at the Herald and they were married in 1975. Beth then worked at The Columbian in Vancouver, Washington as a copy editor, then assistant city editor. They traveled to China in 1982 and 1986, where they took hundreds of photos and produced two slide shows of the trips.

Stanford also worked at the Portland Daily Journal of Commerce , then The Oregonian copy desk in 1978. It was there that he met and collaborated with Thomas Cekay to produce a book titled Rage Against the Dying Light about gillnet fishing on the lower Columbia River, which was privately published. This project, which took about a year to complete, was undertaken during a time of decreasing salmon runs and increasing environmental oversight and regulations. The two spent their days off with the gillnetters in Wahkiakum County, gaining their trust and documenting their stories, with Stanford taking the photos and Thomas writing the text.

After the book was completed, Stanford spent some of his spare time with working on photography projects with Edward R. Vidinghoff, a freelance photographer based in Vancouver, Washington. One of their clients was the Vancouver School District, where they photographed teachers and administrators at school events, as well as documenting the district's HOSTS (Helping One Student to Succeed) program. Stanford then became deputy opinion page editor of The Oregonian Forum section, while Beth also worked there as a line editor and Clark County Bureau chief.

Stanford then spent his spare time focusing on the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) helping to establish the Portland chapter of the AAJA; he would eventually serve in the national office as secretary, then as vice president of print. Stanford wrote Counting on Each Other , a history of the AAJA from 1981 to 1996. He also mentored many younger journalists through the AAJA during summer teaching programs that he participated in through the Institute for Journalism Education based at the University of California, Berkeley. The AAJA established the Stanford Chen Internship Fund Grant in 1998, the same year he was awarded with the AAJA’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chicago national convention. Stanford Chen died on February 4, 1999, at age 51.