CINEMA hot property Gael Garcia Bernal found early fame in Mexican TV soap El Abuelo Y Yo, and Salma Hayek dazzled in the Eighties series Teresa and Un Nuevo Amanecer.

Now, in an international exhibition premiere at Impressions Gallery in York, Mexican American documentary photographer Stefan Ruiz captures the stars, sets and melodrama of 'telenovelas', Latin America's soap operas.

For the past two years, Ruiz has gained special access to the TV studios of Mexican media giant Televisa, known as The Factory of Dreams, where crews work year round to produce 50,000 hours worth of telenovelas annually for export to 110 countries.

In his exhibition, The Factory Of Dreams, Inside Mexico's Soap Operas, Ruiz reveals a vast industry, virtually unknown in the West but adored throughout Latin America and the non-Western world. These tales of revenge, love and intrigue have captivated viewers as far afield as the Philippines, Eastern Europe and Russia, where the soap Los Ricos Tambien Lloran (The Rich Also Cry) became the most watched TV series in history, with 200 million regular viewers.

Ruiz's exhibition features large-scale colour photographs of the elaborate and surreal studio sets with their giant photographic backdrops, portraits of the stars on set and in action, and students of the Televisa soap school where young hopefuls are groomed for future stardom. This world of beautiful women, handsome men and rags-to-riches stories belies a subtext of social aspiration and entrenched racial hierarchies.

Exhibition curator Pippa Oldfield says: "Broadcast in consecutive nightly episodes for months on end, leaving nations gripped until their final dramatic conclusion, these glossy tales of love, money and intrigue are utterly unlike British soaps.

"With their Cinderella storylines and European-featured pale-skinned stars playing rich middle-class families, telenovelas have been heavily criticised for their inaccurate portrayal of gender, race and class - a subtext which Ruiz picks up on.

"In the real Mexico, many women work and two fifths of the nation live in poverty. Recently, some have detected the stirrings of change on-screen, as career women, sympathetic-working class characters and even plots dealing with drugs and corruption infiltrate the occasional series."

Stefan Ruiz's The Factory Of Dreams, Inside Mexico's Soap Opera, Impressions Gallery, Castlegate, York, until August 20.

During opening hours (Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5.30pm; Thursday to 8pm), telenovelas past and present will be shown in the Soap Lounge. The Feed Your Mind Lunchtime Talk on the exhibition takes place tomorrow at 1pm. Admission is free.

Updated: 09:03 Friday, July 22, 2005