Volunteers wearing face masks, gloves and protective gear to protect against coronavirus, gather to clean an area of an outdoor book market set up at Red Square with GUM, State Department store, left, St. Basil's Cathedral, center, Spasskaya Tower, second with, and the Kremlin Wall, right, in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, June 6, 2020. Muscovites clad in face masks and gloves ventured into Red Square for an outdoor book market, a small sign of the Russian capital's gradual efforts to open up amid coronavirus concerns. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)

A demonstrator holds up her fist, in front of police officers during a protest, organised by Black Lives Matter Belgium, against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in central Brussels, Belgium on June 7, 2020. (Photo by Yves Herman/Reuters)

A security officer looks at a scanning screen for checking passengers' temperature at the Istanbul Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, on June 9, 2020. Technology and innovation will top the precautions of Turkey's biggest airport Istanbul Airport against the COVID-19 in the post-pandemic era, according to the management of the airport. The management on June 9 presented their final preparations and measures taken against coronavirus while Turkish airline companies are preparing to resume their international operations the next day. (Photo by Yasin Akgul/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images)

A woman carries her cat as she walks near Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi railway station in Kyiv in the morning of February 24, 2022. Air raid sirens rang out in downtown Kyiv today as cities across Ukraine were hit with what Ukrainian officials said were Russian missile strikes and artillery. (Photo by Daniel Leal/AFP Photo)

A model presents a creation from the Versace Fall-Winter 2022/2023 collection during Fashion Week in Milan, Italy, February 25, 2022. (Photo by Alessandro Garofalo/Reuters)

In this image released by World Press Photo, Thursday April 15, 2021, by Ami Vitale for CNN, titled Rescue of Giraffes from Flooding Island, which won the first prize in the Nature Singles category, shows A Rothschild's giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi) is transported to safety in a custom-built barge from a flooded Longicharo Island, Lake Baringo, in western Kenya, on Dec. 3, 2020. (Photo by Ami Vitale for CNN, World Press Photo via AP Photo)

Trick rider Kendel Sampson performs during the trick riding session of the RAM Rodeo in Warkworth, Ontario, on August 1, 2013. The teenage Encore Presentation Trick Riders perform daring stunts every rodeo season in towns throughout Canada. (Photo by Norm Betts/Barcroft Media)

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.