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)

Elementary school children play outside their classrooms as mount Sinabung volcano spews thick volcanic ash in the background on February 10, 2017 in Karo, Indonesia. Mount Sinabung is one of the most active volcanoes in Indonesia and last erupted in May 2016, killing seven people. (Photo by Albert Damanik/Barcroft Images)

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.

Tea garden workers carry sacks of tea leaves at Fatikchera tea garden estate on the outskirts of Agartala, India, May 10, 2016. (Photo by Jayanta Dey/Reuters)

Commuters wear protective face masks as they walk through a subway station, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Wednesday, December 1, 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Brazil joined the widening circle of countries to report cases of the omicron variant. (Photo by Andre Penner/AP Photo)

Performers dressed like Stormtroopers dance during “The Empire Strips Back: A Star Wars Burlesque Parody” in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 1, 2018. (Photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

The workers dry the pipe papade made from seasoned and colored dough, during the containment imposed by the government as a preventive measure against COVID-19, in Agartala, the capital of the state of north-east India on May 5, 2020. (Photo by Abhisek Saha/Le Pictorium Agency via ZUMA Press/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A child of a migrant worker drinks water as his mother holds him while waiting in a queue for transport to reach to a railway station to board a train to their home state of northern Uttar Pradesh, after a limited reopening of India's giant rail network following a nearly seven-week lockdown to slow the spreading of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Ahmedabad, India, May 15, 2020. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)