A bystander walks past a fresco by street artist Seth depicting a girl with a Ukrainian flag walking on tanks in Paris on March 01, 2022. (Photo by Joel Saget/AFP Photo)

Racegoers shelter from the rain as they attend on the second day of the Grand National Festival horse race meeting at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool, north-west England, on April 14, 2023. (Photo by Oli Scarff/AFP Photo)

Popocatepetl volcano spews incandescent material as seen from Paso de Cortés on May 23, 2023 in Amecameca, Mexico. The second highest volcano in the country increased its activity while Mexican authorities raised the alert to yellow phase 3. Popocatepetl volcano caused the fall of ashes in different municipalities in Puebla, Estado de Mexico and Mexico City. Mexican army has spread forces as a preventive measure while the 3 levels of government are in coordination to observe the activity of the volcano and the situation in the surroundings. (Photo by Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images)

English-Albanian singer and songwriter Dua Lipa in the last decade of June 2023 wears a Miu Miu bra as a shirt under a jacket and skirt set. (Photo by dualipa/Instagram)

American model Kendall Jenner keeps her cool during a desert getaway in the second decade of June 2025. (Photo by @kendalljenner/Instagram)

A French Cancan dancer performs in front of the Moulin Rouge cabaret during celebrations marking the restart of its iconic windmill with red sails, in Paris, France on July 10, 2025. (Photo by Tom Nicholson/Reuters)

This plane looks like it's bound for the moon as it shoots across the sky. Photographer Sebastien Lebrigand was impressed he could even see the lights on the jet's wings in this stunning silhouette. (Photo by Sebastien Lebrigand/Solent News)

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.