"The Journey: From Despair to Hope" will be on display weekdays from July 11 to October 30 at the USC Institute for Genetic Medicine Art Gallery on the Health Sciences Campus.

An invitation-only reception on Saturday, July 11, will provide an opportunity to meet the artist, photographer Victor Dyck, and writer, G. Blair Franks, who serves as president of the Head and Neck Cancer Survivors Support Group.

This pictorial narrative of photographer Dyck's international journey, with accompanying prose by Franks, takes the viewer on a virtual, symbolic journey of physical, mental and spiritual revival. Similar to all journeys into the unknown, this journey starts with a patient receiving a diagnosis of head and neck cancer. The viewer walks with the protagonist through many moods, on the journey through realization, decision-making, surgery, survival and coming to terms with a new physical, mental and spiritual presence.

As with any enforced journey, the cancer process involves initial shock and disbelief, anger and resolution, equanimity and, finally, an inner spiritual acceptance, a state of personal peace.

Dyck, a caregiver for a head and neck cancer survivor, has used his photographs and the prose of Franks, himself a head and neck cancer survivor, to interpret the cancer surgery survivor's thought fragments — obvious on one level, but complex, metaphoric and cryptic on other levels.  The truth of these two journeys — one a physical, international journey in real time; the second, a journey of the mind and spirit — speaks to the truths of all enforced journeys.

All important art inspires thought and emotion. This exhibit provides an opportunity for the intent and expression of the artist, those of the viewer, and the substance of the art itself to interact in an open-minded dialog. The artist and writer hope each viewer will draw on personal experience, memories and reflections from their journeys to come to conclusions of renewal, resurgence and spiritual renaissance.

Several organizations will partner on events during the exhibit, including the USC Keck School of Medicine's Department of Otolaryngology, the Head and Neck Cancer Support Program; the L.A. Area Nuclear Disarmament Coalition; Americans for Informed Democracy; and the event committees of the L.A. Mumbai, L.A. St. Petersburg and L.A. Nagoya Sister Cities Affiliations.