A child imagines life outside reality by creating a wild, monster-inhabited world of escapism in “Pan’s Labyrinth,” a stylistic fantasy-art film released in 2006 from Guillermo del Toro. That world, or at least a version of it, is very familiar to Mike Ruiz.
As a kid, growing up as one of few ethnic people in Quebec, he envisioned an alternate reality that transcended his drab real-life. Little did he know that years later he’d be implementing it “into” real-life: he’s famous for his celebrity photographs, capturing the who’s-who of Hollywood in another light.