Ahmed Klink: From Biomedical Engineering PhD to Pop Culture Photographer

Ahmed Klink built his career around his passion. All images: Ahmed Klink

It’s hard to know what is the most compelling part of Ahmed Klink’s life story: Escaping a raging Civil War in his native country of Lebanon at age two. Years later, moving to New York City to pursue a PhD in biomedical engineering. Then doing a complete 180 and turning his photography side hustle into a full-time career. He now photographs many of the current pop culture icons and—including some he grew up watching and listening to, from David Duchovny to Travis Scott, Kim Kardashian West and 50 Cent, for publications and brands like Adidas and Budweiser.

Here, he shares how he practiced surgery on mice by day and broke into the photography industry at night, his travels from Lebanon to Paris to New York City, and why he launched the independent studio Sunday Afternoon to represent up-and-coming creators.

Hi Kim! She is one the many famous people Klink has photographed.

When did you land in New York?

I moved on November 17, 2007. I kept that plane ticket for a while before it got lost in the shuffle. It was a one-way ticket. I was joining Mount Sinai Hospital to do my PhD. That's why I came to New York in the first place.

I was studying nanoparticles and medical imaging, taking “pictures” of arteries and using MRIs and CT scans, even nuclear imaging to diagnose cancer. I guess I was just doing photography but more at a very micro and tiny scale.

How did your creative career come to be?

The year before I moved to New York, I graduated with a college degree in engineering. I was in Paris, and I had a year between graduation and when I started my PhD. So I decided to document my last year in France. I discovered my mom's camera in her bedroom and picked it up to start shooting. I taught myself and, in July 2007, my dad got me a DSLR for my birthday. I used to spend nights walking in Paris, shooting. I took that camera to New York with me and spent my free time shooting. It was different from Paris because people are more open to cameras here. There was a feeling you could capture anything.

You were a PhD student by day, photographer by night?

Yeah, there were two sides to me. By day, I would study cardiovascular disease, talk to my advisors about how to diagnose heart attacks and study contrast agents. We had to learn how to do surgery on mice, it was a lot of pre-clinical research. .

Then at night I would go home, pick up my camera and go to concerts. I got sucked into the downtown scene, shooting at small bars, like Pianos, Cake Shop and Mercury Lounge. My fellow students would follow me online and were very curious about that other side of my life.

“I grew up watching David Duchovny on The X Files. Then when I went to photograph him, I shook his hand and he said, ‘I’m David.’ I’m like, yeah, I know.”

How did you choose one life over the other?

It was organic. I started reaching out to small publications, like Pitchfork. They provided me with a press pass to shoot a local concert and a $10 check for my photos. That sounded pretty good at the time.

The concerts are draining. You have three songs to shoot and then you have to get out. That taught me to shoot on the fly, quickly, and in conditions that were constantly changing because you don't know where the performer is going to be. You have to adapt on the fly. Eventually that got me to shoot bigger and bigger acts. I got to shoot the CMJ Music Festival and ALL Points West, which was kind of the Coachella of New York. It had Jay-Z and Coldplay. I also got to shoot Metallica at some point. I was a huge fan growing up so it was surreal for me to find myself inches from James and Kirk.

As both your studies and your photography career got more serious, how did you do both at the same time?

Concerts happen at night, so that was fine. But I started doing more editorial photo shoots and celebrity portraits and those happen during working hours. When you go shoot a portrait of Kevin Hart, you have to be free most of the day So I would just leave the lab—take an extra long lunch break—and then come back to work in the lab. On these days, I’d end up working until three or four a.m. I have fond memories of school, but I realized my photography was taking off and I could pursue it as a career.

How did your parents respond when you told them you were taking that route?

They were encouraging. My dad was a doctor and always painted. Growing up in France, I was always exposed to beauty and art which was hugely influential. My parents had a good understanding of that. They took me to museums, to the Monet Gardens and more. When my photography started to get some recognition, my parents knew it wasn’t a whim. It had been a pretty steady build of five, six, seven years of honing the craft of photography.

The other side of Klink’s life revolved around intensive research on medical imaging…photography of a different sort!

Your story goes back even further than your studies, all the way back to growing up in Lebanon during a Civil War. Tell us about that time of your family’s life

I left the country when I was 18 months, so I don't remember leaving. My parents were studying in Romania, which was under Communist regime at the time, so I grew up with my grandparents. It was either grow up in a Communist regime or stay with grandparents where there was a Civil War.

After my parents graduated, they went to France and I joined them there. My cousin Ziad, who was 17 at the time, was also going to study med school in France, and the plan was for me to go with him. We could not fly out of Beirut to Paris, so we had to take a bus to Syria, which was an open country back then. Ziad took me on a bus with him, as we crossed the border and flew from Damascus to Paris where I reunited with my parents and grew up in France. 

What a journey. 

Yeah, parents had to go through a lot. They left Lebanon at the age of 18 to go to Romania. My mom’s dad had passed away during the war and my mom inherited some land that she sold to be able to pay for her med school. But then the currency in Lebanon started hyper-inflating and, after a year, the money that she had made from her land sale was pretty much worthless. My parents had to figure out a new way to make money to pay for school, so my dad started selling Levi’s jeans from Italy in Romania because those were banned under the communist regime as they were kind of a poster child for capitalism. He would literally cross the border to go to Italy and smuggle back some Levi’s and sell them on the Med School campus . They did what they had to do. 

Now you’re photographing the biggest names in pop culture. 

It’s wild. I grew up watching David Duchovny on The X Files. Then when I went to photograph him, I shook his hand and he said, “I’m David.” I’m like, yeah, I know. I just shot 50 Cent a couple of weeks ago. It’s kind of like everything that happened in my teenage years is materializing in real life. 

What’s next?

I’m always looking to evolve. I was a PhD in biomedical imaging and now I’m a photographer. I’m arguably getting more directing work than photographer work these days. 

I've also started a company with my partner, Juan Carlos, who's an amazing designer and typographer. We represent 10 to 15 photographers, designers, illustrators, and directors.

What guidance do you share with these people who are in the earlier stages of their careers?

We encourage people to just keep putting their work out there. Put their work to work. If someone doesn't like it, ask them if they know of anybody who might like it. Then you turn a negative into a positive. You turn someone who doesn't like your work to someone who's going to help you find somebody who does.

Back then it was a lot of homework but today there are so many online tools that facilitate this. Obviously, Instagram is great to share work. Combine that with a platform like Working Not Working that helps the creative community connect with photo editors or art buyers and you really have all the tools at your disposal to extend the reach of your work.

If you’d like to read more from The Creative Factor—such as Morten Bonde’s story about reinventing himself as a LEGO Art Director while losing his sight or Edése Doret: Inside the Mind-Boggling World of Private Jet Design—sign up for our newsletter.