The LHC is not only the most powerful collider for proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions, but it is also the most powerful source of photon collisions, because the protons and ions in the accelerator carry an electromagnetic field, which can be viewed as a flux of quasi-real photons. The photon-nucleus and photon-proton processes can be studied in ultra-peripheral collisions and offer an unique opportunity to study fundamental interactions in QED and QCD providing for example experimental data to search for saturation and shadowing effects. This text presents a summary of the latest $\rho^0$ and $\mathrm{J}/\psi $ cross section measurements with the ALICE detector.