These adorable cats – which are twins – showcase their contrasting blue and green eyes. The cats have a condition called heterochromia iridis, which causes each eye to vary in color. (Photo by @sis.twins/Caters News Agency)

A couple kisses in a central Barcelona street during the first night without the state of alarm, on 9 May, 2021 in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The state of alarm that the Government decreed for the second time six months ago ended at 00.00 hours this Sunday, May 9. In Catalonia this has led to the fall of the curfew and the perimeter confinement of the Community. (Photo By Lorena Sopena via Getty Images)

Riot police wear face masks, as a precautionary measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus, allow a women to cross a cordon after a protest by pro-democracy demonstrators at a shopping mall in Hong Kong on May 9, 2020. (Photo by Isaac Lawrence/AFP Photo)

American singer-songwriter and actress Olivia Rodrigo accepts the Song of the Year award for “Drivers License” onstage during the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards at Barclays Center on September 12, 2021 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

Ukrainian state emblem is seen on a gun's holster as soldiers guard naval base in the village of Novoozernoye, some 91 km west of Crimean capital Simferopol, Ukraine, on Monday, March 3, 2014. Ukraine says Russian forces controlling the strategic region of Crimea are demanding that the crew of two Ukrainian warships in Sevastopol's harbor must surrender. (Photo by Ivan Sekretarev/AP Photo)

A clown nose is placed on a child's face during a protest opposing violence against women after the murder of Venezuelan actress and clown Julieta Inés Hernández Martínez in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Monday, January 8, 2024. The body of Hern·ndez, who had been missing since Dec. 23 while traveling by bicycle, was found in Presidente Figueiredo city, near Manaus in Amazonas state. (Photo by Bruna Prado/AP Photo)

A woman greets a street artist at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, northern Spain July 8, 2016. (Photo by Eloy Alonso/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.