Lindsey Stirling performs onstage at Salle Pleyel on December 19, 2023 in Paris, France. (Photo by Kristy Sparow/Getty Images)

Sеx worker Geraldine wearing cat make-up sits on her usual corner as she waits for clients outside the Revolution subway station, in Mexico City, Saturday, March 13, 2021. Geraldine, 30, a sеx worker since age 15, says many of her regular clients have stopped coming amid the coronavirus pandemic and that seeing new clients presents new health and security risks. She is most concerned about the risk of bringing COVID-19 home to her partner, who has diabetes. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

Clara Macaroni, 3, rests on her father's prize-winning Shorthorn cow before a parade at the opening ceremony for the Rural Society's annual exposition in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sunday, July 28, 2024. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

A month-old Tengmalm’s owl chick blends in with soft toys on August 8, 2024 at the Scottish Owl Centre in Whitburn, West Lothian. The chick is being raised by Trystan Williams, the centre’s head keeper, after losing its father and being abandoned by its mother. (Photo by Katielee Arrowsmith/South West News Service)

Long shadows are cast by players as Mitch Wallis of the Bulldogs passes the ball during the 2016 AFL Round 08 match between the Melbourne Demons and the Western Bulldogs at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne on May 15, 2016. (Photo by Scott Barbour/AFL Media/Getty Images)

A biker shows his 12-year-old cat “Chiquinho” – which always rides with him on his motorbike – in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on June 19, 2016. (Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP Photo)

Model friends Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Stella Maxwell and actress Kristen Stewart and are seen having dinner together in Milan, Italy on June 16, 2018. Bella and Kendall cheekily showed the camera middle finger while couple Stella and Kristen talked. (Photo by Splash News and Pictures)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.