Katy Perry poses backstage during rehearsals for the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards at The Forum on August 25, 2017 in Inglewood, California. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images for MTV)

American singer Bleta “Bebe” Rexha poses with fans at the iHeartRadio MuchMusic Video Awards (MMVAs) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on August 26, 2018. (Photo by Mark Blinch/Reuters)

Sеx worker Moira Mona wears a mask at her studio where she creates videos near Amsterdam, Netherlands on June 30, 2020. (Photo by Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters)

In this image released on October 2, Bella Hadid is seen backstage during Rihanna's Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 2 presented by Amazon Prime Video at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California; and broadcast on October 2, 2020. (Photo by Jerritt Clark/Getty Images for Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 2 Presented by Amazon Prime Video)

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.

Gisele Marie, a Muslim woman and professional heavy metal musician, holds her Gibson Flying V electric guitar as walks down stairs at the end of a fund raising concert for the Syrian refugees in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro November 8, 2015. Based in Sao Paulo, Marie, 42, is the granddaughter of German Catholics, and converted to Islam several months after her father passed away in 2009. Marie, who wears the burka, has been fronting her brothers' heavy metal band "Spectrus" since 2012. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

Nikita Dragun attends the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards at Prudential Center on August 26, 2019 in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo by Caitlin Ochs/Reuters)