A resident looks into a newly-built giant trash can, partially buried underground, next to a street in Taiyuan, Shanxi province November 6, 2014. The trash can, which has a diameter of 1.9 meters and a depth of 2.8 meters, could contain approximately 10 cubic metres of garbage. It was built to replace an open-air garbage dump site, local media reported. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Nursing and care personnel lay on the floor in the ICU unit, during a demonstration on International Nursing and Care day, at the Mont Legia Hospital in Liege, Belgium, Wednesday, May 12, 2021. Hospital personnel around Belgium took part in various actions around the country on Wednesday to highlight the work they do and demand better recognition. (Photo by Valentin Bianchi/AP Photo)

The popular K-pop group Blackpink watch the fireworks at Etihad Park from the stage at the end of the show in Abu Dhabi on Saturday, February 4, 2023. (Photo by Live Nation Entertainment)

Farmers arrange bunches of water lilies after harvesting them from the wetlands in Barishal, Bangladesh on March 21, 2023. Floating through 10,000 acres of canal, farmers use their little boats to fetch the flowers. (Photo by Joy Saha/Cover 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.

A street performer jumps in the air inside Central Park as the colors of autumn become more prevalent in New York, October 29, 2015. (Photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

A picture made available 27 November 2015 shows a handler putting his head between the gaping fangs of a crocodile during a show at the Samutprakarn Crocodile Farm and Zoo, Samutprakarn province, outside Bangkok, Thailand, 26 November 2015. The farm and zoo claims to be the world's largest crocodile farm with more than 80,000 freshwater and marine crocodiles, and offers shows such as crocodile wrestling to attract tourists. (Photo by Diego Azubel/EPA)