Growing up as an Asian-American in the rural hills of upstate New York, Stafford has been an outsider from an early age. This nurtured a perspective of one always looking in from outside the circle and developed into a critical and questioning gaze that tends to give his work an iconoclastic subtext. His work has been exhibited and published internationally with shows in New York, Brazil and Chicago. He has been teaching photography at Grand Valley State University for the past 10 years.