Mug shot of De Gracy (sic) and Edward Dalton. Details unknown. Central Police Station, Sydney, around 1920. (Photo by NSW Police Forensic Photography Archive, Justice & Police Museum, Histiric Houses Trust of NSW)

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.

Yippie leader Jerry Rubin, barred on December 4, from House Un-American Activities subcommittee hearing, aims a toy gun in “self defense” outside the Washington hearing room on December 5, 1969. Rubin showed up in his Santa Clause suit because he believed it was typical of the committee which, he said, “is a total circus”. (Photo by Bob Daugherty/AP Photo)

Leslie Cliff and his wife Violet, English figure skating pair. Olympic games of Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany), 1936. (Photo by Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images)

Model Heidi Klum in front of Concorde jet after arriving for Victoria's Secret fashion show at Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2000. (Photo by Marion Curtis/DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Mae Zelinsky, left, and Betty O'Beda test ammunition on a .30 caliber rifle at a Remington Arms plant on April 30, 1943. Many women took over jobs that were left vacant when men went overseas to fight in World War II. (Photo by AP Photo)

Gunfire was brought to the steps of President Truman's Washington home, Blair House, as two assassins tried to kill the chief executive, November 1, 1950. One of the gunmen, Oscar Collazzo of New York, lay wounded at the bottom of Blair House's front steps after the president's police guard had finished their work, at the cost of one guards' life, Dec. 9, 1950. The second gunman was killed. (Photo by Harvey Georges/AP Photo)

Long row of shiny new Flying Fortresses, part of huge reserves being built up in Britain for D-Day, stands by to be flown to combat units as replacements, May 25, 1944. (Photo by AP Photo)