Richard Winsor, Ashley Shaw, Zizi Strallen, Glenn Graham, Nicole Kabera, Harrison Dowzell, Will Bozier and Cordelia Braithwaite during a photo call for Sir Matthew Bourne's The Car Man at the Royal Albert Hall, London on May 11, 2022, a reinterpretation of Bizet's Carmen, staged in 1960s American diner-garages with a specially expanded 65-dancer production for the hall, as part of its 150th anniversary. (Photo by Ian West/PA Images via Getty Images)

Performers ride atop a car leading to the the National Circus Day celebration in Santiago, Chile, Saturday, September 4, 2021, amid the new coronavirus pandemic. Chile's Culture Minister set the stage for the first circus performances with a ringside public since the beginning of the pandemic quarantine measures as the South American country looks to fully roll back almost all COVID-19 related restrictions. (Photo by Esteban Felix/AP Photo)

Kim and Khloe Kardashian turned up the heat on the sandy shores of Turks and Caicos on April 6, 2024. The glamorous sisters were spotted soaking up the sun in their stunning snake skin bikinis while enjoying quality beach time. Though their kids weren't pictured, the Kardashian clan was making the most of their paradise getaway while Kim wore her cowboy hat in the water. Pictured: American media personality Kim Kardashian. (Photo by Backgrid USA)

In this image released on September 22, American actress and singer Vanessa Hudgens attends Rihanna's Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 3 presented by Amazon Prime Video at The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites in Los Angeles, California; and broadcast on September 24, 2021. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Rihanna's Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 3 Presented by Amazon Prime Video)

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.

The Nasīr al-Mulk Mosque or Pink Mosque is a traditional mosque in Shiraz, Iran, located in Goade-e-Araban place (near the famous Shah Cheragh mosque). The mosque was built during the Qājār era, and is still in use under protection by Nasir al Mulk's Endowment Foundation. It was built by the order of Mirza Hasan Ali Nasir al Molk, one of the lords of the Qajar Dynasty, in 1876 and was finished in 1888. The designers were Muhammad Hasan-e-Memar and Muhammad Reza Kashi Paz-e-Shirazi. The mosque extensively uses colored glass in its facade, and displays other traditional elements such as panj kāseh-i (five concaves) in its design, it is also named in popular culture as Pink Mosque due to the usage of beautiful pink color tiles for its interior design.

“Hey! I'm Thomas Shahan, an artist and macrophotographer from Oklahoma. In my spare time over the past few years, I've been shooting portraiture of local arthropods. Why would I devote countless hours to tramping through forests, fields and the like searching for insects and spiders? Well, despite some common beliefs, arthropods (members of the phylum Arthropoda – insects, spiders, crustaceans...) represent an endlessly varied, wildly beautiful and fascinating bunch of animals with surprisingly personable faces and behavior. Often, all it takes is simply inspecting their lives on a closer level to turn repulsion to reverence”. – Thomas Shahan

Photo: Adult Male Jumping Spider at Sunset – Phidippus mystaceus. (Photo by Thomas Shahan; Source: Flickr)

A girl paddles on her stand-up board on the waters of Guanabara bay at Bica beach in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, January 10, 2016. Few features capture the beauty, or the problems, of one of the world's most dramatic urban landscapes like Guanabara Bay - the finger-like inlet that forms the shoreline and harbor for Rio de Janeiro. The bay, which carves into southeast Brazil from the Atlantic Ocean, literally gave Rio its name when Portuguese mariners mistook it for a “rio”, or “river”. Four centuries later, the bay is preparing to welcome another sort of seafarer – Olympic sailors, who will navigate the bay when the 2016 Rio Olympics kick off in August. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)