The World's Most Photographed - Season 1

In this edition, the photographers who captured the spontaneous side of Elvis Presley before he was consumed by the publicity machine, as well as the last pictures ever to be taken of the real Elvis Presley.

Photographs charting the rollercoaster life in and out of the ring of the ex-world heavyweight boxing champion, from iconic images to less familiar shots of Ali in off-guard moments.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, images of Audrey Hepburn dazzled the world.

More than just a Hollywood movie star, she was also a new kind of fashion icon. Her waif-like figure redefined Hollywood standards ofbeauty. But few people knew she owed her slender physique to the long-term effects of wartime starvation. Growing up under German occupation in Holland, Hepburn had a traumatic childhood scarred by fear, malnutrition and the emotional distress of her father walking out of the family home.

Throughout her career her enigmatic smile inspired some of the most famous photographers in the world. But this film reveals that painful memories of terror and loss were never far from the surface.

Adolf Hitler, the first state leader to have a totally manufactured image, used photography to hypnotise and corrupt a nation. In the 1930s, the photographer Heinrich Hoffmann transformed the young camera-shypolitician into a figure of absolute power, helping to mastermind one of the most successful campaigns of mass manipulation in history.

Previously unseen private images of Hitler have been unearthed, taken by the photographers closest to him, including his mistress Eva Braun and his favourite photographer Walter Frentz - the man who had the opportunity to assassinate Hitler in 1944 but chose not to.

Marilyn Monroe is known primarily as a movie star, but she always preferred being photographed. Faced with the pressure and chaos of the film set, she was often anxious and full of self-doubt. One-on-one with aphotographer, she felt at ease and in control.

Whenever the pressures of Hollywood threatened to overwhelm her, she always turned to photographers for the reassurance and intimacy she craved.

This programme explores the ways in which Marilyn Monroe used photography to gain a sense of control over her life as well as to further her career.

John F Kennedy was one of the most popular presidents of the United States of America. At the core of his appeal was his image; Kennedy was highly photogenic. He also understood the power of the photograph and exploited it more effectively than any other politician before him.

Kennedy was a totally new kind of president: glamorous and informal, a patriot with a glittering war record and a loving father and husband. But while he seemed to be exposing his whole life to the camera, he was in fact concealing two secrets - secrets so explosive they had the power to destroy his presidency. This film explores the way that Kennedy used photography to help to promote an image that was at odds with his frail state of health and his compulsive promiscuity.

In just three films and a career spanning 18 short months, James Dean captured the imagination of a new generation, hungry for a different kind of Hollywood hero - sensitive, spontaneous, unconventional and sexually ambiguous. His sudden, violent death in a car crash aged just 24 guaranteed him the immortality he craved and fixed his image as the beautiful rebellious youth in the public's mind forever.

One photoshoot, just seven months before his death, managed to capture the essence of the troubled, enigmatic Dean like no other. In February 1955, photographer Dennis Stock was given unique access to the new star, travelling with him to his home town of Indiana, then on to New York and LA. Their intimate collaboration would result in some of the most revealing, enduring and disturbing images of Dean ever taken. This film tells the story of the extraordinary shoot that would become his epitaph.

Mahatma Gandhi, the man who brought the British Empire to its knees, was a master of media manipulation. For a non-violent campaigner who employed protest, prayer and fasting, the photograph was one of themightiest weapons in the fight to liberate India.

In April 1930, the world held its breath as an old man, dressed only in a loin cloth, bent down at the shore of the Arabian Sea to pick up a handful of salt, thereby breaking the law. Photographers from around the world captured this small act of protest, and it was these photographs that shook the foundations of the empire.

We trace the unknown history of Gandhi's life in front of the camera, from an 18-year-old dandy in London and his rapport with Life magazine photographer Margaret Bourke White, to Cartier-Bresson's haunting images of the millions that mourned at the funeral of the Father of the Nation.

Queen Victoria's accession to the throne in 1837 coincided almost exactly with the invention of photography. She would be the first woman in the world to live both her private and public lives in front of thecamera.

At first, photography was a private pleasure, a way of capturing images of herself and her family for their own personal amusement. But during the course of her 64-year reign, Queen Victoria began to use the camera as a political weapon. The new art of photography was a vital tool in Victoria's battle to safeguard the British throne. It was a means to quell the forces of republicanism, a way to win the affection and sympathy of her people and an opportunity to establish her as the defining symbol of British imperial power.

By the time Queen Victoria died in 1901, photography had transformed the relationship between the monarchy and the people. The private life of the monarch was more visible to more people than ever before. But Victoria still managed to take one photographic secret to the grave.

Greta Garbo was one of the most mysterious and secretive film stars of the 20th century - she cast a spell over Hollywood in the 1920s and 30s with her exotic looks and hypnotic presence. She was ferociouslyprotective of her private life and detested being photographed off the movie set.

With her last screen appearance in 1941, she spent the next 50 years playing a game of cat and mouse with photographers. But the more she tried to hide from the camera, the more aggressively she was hunted down. One photographer stalked her around New York for the last ten years of her life - many of these photographs are revealed here for the first time.

Greta Garbo's life became a nightmare - a disturbing parable of the 20th-century obsession with celebrity.