Rowers enter in Canaregio river during the 42nd Venice Vogalonga on May 15, 2016 in Venice, Italy. 42 years ago a group of Venetians, both amateur and professional rowers, came up with an idea of non-competitive race in which any kind of rowing boat can take part. The first Vogalonga began with the message to protest against the growing use of powerboats in Venice and the swell damage they do to the historic city. (Photo by Awakening/Getty Images)

A physically challenged girl looks at her brother as she is kept in a basin to seek alms from people on the street in Kano, Nigeria December 30, 2015. The girl has suffered from her condition since birth. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Sarah Bui poses for photographer, Brian Le around blossoming cherry trees, near the Tidal Basin on Thursday March 23, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

A woman (C) shops for an offering at the witch doctor's street in La Paz, July 31, 2015. According to Andean culture, the all the month of August is a time to give offerings to “Pachamama” to give thanks for their farms and health. The Aymaras use coca leaves, candies, animal fat, llama fetuses, some dried fruits, powdered minerals and alcohol during these rituals. (Photo by David Mercado/Reuters)

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.

Colonel Roscoe Turner, the pilot of an American Boeing plane, showing his wife a model of the plane, at the airfield in Mildenhall. (Photo by R. Wesley/Fox Photos/Getty Images). 19th October 1934

A silicon rug in the form of Adolph Hitler on display during an exhibition by Israeli artist Boaz Arad, at the Center for Contemporary Art February 22, 2007 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Arad is an Israeli artist who is dealing with the Holocaust in a provocative way. He uses the Holocaust to discuss human evil and contemporary Israel, which he says is torn and crumbling. (Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images)

Participants take part in the annual Great Spitalfields Pancake Race in aid of London's Air Ambulance in London, Britain February 9, 2016. (Photo by Stefan Wermuth/Reuters)