Judith Walgren, 2016 MFA in Visual Art

Walgren is a Pulitzer Prize winner in Photography, a full-time faculty member at Michigan State University, and a recent Director of Photography for the San Francisco Chronicle.

These photos taken by Walgren show homeless teen Michael Cunningham and his girlfriend Leandra (Lea) Holloway.

Michael Cunningham, 20, was taken from his alcoholic father when he was three years old and placed in at least 42 foster homes by the time he was emancipated in February 2008. His mother disappeared when he was around three. After leaving foster care, he was unable to hold down a job and wound up on the streets.

His last foster home was with Lea’s aunt, where the couple met. They have been together over a year now and have struggled to find a stabile place to live. The couple has slept on friend’s couches, in shelters, in cheap motels, while trying to get a grip on their lives and stabilize, something neither of them learned from their parents or their brief stays in foster homes.

Lea’s mother, a crack addict, died when Lea was six, and Lea was taken into the system at two. After living in a series of foster homes, she was adopted, but Lea started to run away when she turned 13 and was asked to move out by the time she was 16

Learn more at www.jujuphoto.com.