The Factory of Dreams (signed edition)

Over the past six years, Stefan Ruiz (born 1966) has gained special access to Mexico's Televisa studios, known as "The Factory of Dreams," where nearly 50,000 hours-worth of telenovelas (soap operas) are produced and exported annually to more than 100 countries. These intriguing tales of revenge, love, money and despair are one of Mexico's largest exports, popular throughout Latin America as well as in Africa, Asia and Europe. Former Televisa stars turned Hollywood favorites include Salma Hayek and Gael García Bernal. Rogelio Guerra, who starred in "Los Ricos También Lloran" ("The Rich Also Cry")--a show whose finale was watched by 70 percent of the population of Russia--once delivered the Russian New Year's presidential address when Boris Yeltsin fell ill. Stefan Ruiz's photographs of the factory and its people reveal a behind-the-scenes look at this special place with humor and affection. Ruiz's photographs reveal a secret world of elaborate and surreal studio sets, and include portraits of the television stars in character and students being groomed for future celebrity at the Televisa "soap school." This is the world of beautiful women, handsome men and rags-to-riches Cinderella stories, which reveal the underlying fantasies of social aspiration, as well as entrenched racial hierarchies. Accompanying Ruiz's pictures are informative texts, plot summaries and bits of dialogue that illuminate both the factory and the dreams behind this fascinating cultural phenomenon.

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 176
Publication date: 2012-07-31
Measurements: 9.46 x 11.84 x 0.97 inches
ISBN: 9781683950134

The New York-based photographer returned regularly to Televisa to capture the surreal life behind one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the world. Using a large-format camera, he staged portraits of dramatically posed actors in fake living rooms and doctors’ offices, with tangles of stage lights just overhead. He recorded the often hyperreal decor of the sets, including a replica of Michelangelo’s David standing before a textured fuchsia wall. And he photographed the studio’s acting school, where budding soap stars are taught how to kiss for TV. Ninety of these images have now been compiled in the book The Factory of Dreams: Inside Televisa Studios, published by Aperture. For Ruiz, the series was an opportunity to explore an important aspect of popular culture in a critical yet dignified way.–Carolina A. Miranda”ARTnews” (09/01/2012)

Born in San Francisco, of Mexican/Italian descent, Ruiz studied art in California and Venice. In 1990, after documenting Islam’s influence on traditional West African art, and with a scholarship from The Color Purple Foundation, Ruiz turned to photography. He now works regularly for publications around the world including Rolling Stone and the New York Times Magazine.