A Magnum photographer captures civilians dodging mortars as they try to escape the Russian advance on the city of Irpin.

Early on Sunday afternoon, Jérôme Sessini, a French photographer on assignment for The New Yorker in Ukraine, arrived in Irpin, a small town of sixty thousand people about a half hour’s drive west of the capital, Kyiv. Sessini, who is based in Paris and has covered conflicts around the world for the Magnum photo agency, was travelling with three companions: a Ukrainian driver and two photographers. Their destination was a bridge on the Irpin River which Ukrainian troops had destroyed to slow Russian forces advancing on Kyiv. The day before, Sessini had witnessed civilians huddled under what was left of the bridge, trying to make their way across the river, fleeing Russian troops. He had returned to see how the evacuation was progressing.

The group pulled over a kilometre from the bridge, making sure to turn their vehicle around so it was pointed back toward Kyiv, in case they needed to make a getaway. They walked past a Ukrainian checkpoint and found themselves in front of the bridge, where ten to fifteen soldiers and civilians were working to help people cross the river on wooden planks. The sound of shelling seemed to be drawing closer, so Sessini took cover near a church. He was about to try to cross a street when he heard a large explosion. A mortar had landed several metres away. A piece of shrapnel struck Maxim Dondyuk, a Ukrainian photographer traveling with Sessini, in the right shoulder, resulting in what he described as a superficial wound. They decided to retreat toward the car. “It was too dangerous,” Sessini told me. They were making their way back through the town when another shell landed nearby. “That’s when I took the picture of the family,” Sessini said.

Sessini captured four people sprawled on the ground. There is a chubby-cheeked toddler, wearing a blue knit hat with a cartoon animal on it. He is bundled, head to toe, in a brown snowsuit. His face is congealed into a mask of terror. A man cradling the boy, presumably his father, holds his hand to his head, trying to recover his bearings. A figure, possibly an older child, is curled in a fetal position. A woman behind them, wearing a backpack, struggles to get to her feet. Sessini told me he was unable to talk to the family, because they were so frightened. People in cars were rescuing civilians from the road. The family clambered into a vehicle. They headed toward Kyiv, to an unknown future. Before Sessini reached the car, he passed several dead bodies on the pavement; a gray rolling suitcase sat nearby.