His father, Konrad Stendal, was an executive at the Chemické závody Sokolov chemical company, and his mother was Sara Marculis, whose family owned several successful dime stores in Prague and Plzeň.
It is believed that Konrad Stendal committed suicide by ingesting photographic processing chemicals at hand in his brother's store.
Seldom ironic, Stendal sought very literal and personal renderings of his subjects, giving the audience a more emotional and direct experience of what they might otherwise consider prosaic.
Unlike his fellow émigrés, many of whom returned to Europe after the war, Stendal remained in California until he died on November 18, 1992 in North Hollywood, Los Angeles.
Stendal was included in the 1967 "New Documents" exhibition, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City along with Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus.
Having grown up in the verdant city of Prague, Stendal was fascinated by the bizarre and thrilling images of people almost cavalierly adapting to a harsh life in the desert.
A selection of photographs from these trips was published as Urban / Desert and was displayed at the Whatley Gallery in Los Angeles in 1998.