Workers sleep on a railway track under repair in New Delhi, India, June 15, 2018. (Photo by Saumya Khandelwal/Reuters)

A cooling tower is seen under mechanical demolition in Binzhou, Shandong Province, China, July 13, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

Bad Christmas gift makes the pretty girl look disappointed in x-mas time under the christmas tree. (Photo by pixelrain/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

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.

Germany, Business couple making love under desk. (Photo by Roman Maerzinger/Getty Images)

A child sleeps under a table at the Jorkpan market in Sinkor district in Monrovia, Liberia on May 2, 2016. (Photo by Marco Longari/AFP Photo)

A rickshaw man runs under the blooming cherry blossoms in Tokyo, Sunday, March 29, 2015. (Photo by Shizuo Kambayashi/AP Photo)

A grey seal basks under a rainbow on a beach on the Lincolnshire coast, England on November 21, 2017. (Photo by Sean Weekly/Caters News Agency)