Born 1928 in Tehran, famed Iranian photographer Shahrokh Hatami began a career as journalist for an Iranian newspaper, Hatami's roving lens captured a variety of events as he let his camera tell the story from 1950. Over seven decades, he captured a dizzying array of stories, providing notably for Life magazine the visual backdrop for the overthrow of Iran's  first democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq (1882-1967) in a 1953 coup orchestrated by the US and the UK.

A quarter century later he would be snapping dramatic images of the Islamic Revolution and covered front-page events from the 1979 Islamic Revolution to English rock band Beatles in their early day. He was on the plane that flew the Leader of the Revolution Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-1989) back to Iran in February 1979.

But Hatami did not want any publicity for himself and was known by his inner circle to be a discreet and modest man. He died from pulmonary insufficiency in 2017 in Auxi-le-Chateau, northern France, aged 89.

These gorgeous photos that Hatami took celebrities are among his work from the 1960s.