The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is seen in an aerial view on February 20, 2014 in the Mojave Desert in California near Primm, Nevada. The largest solar thermal power-tower system in the world, owned by NRG Energy, Google and BrightSource Energy, opened last week in the Ivanpah Dry Lake and uses 347,000 computer-controlled mirrors to focus sunlight onto boilers on top of three 459-foot towers, where water is heated to produce steam to power turbines providing power to more than 140,000 California homes. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

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.

A couple who did not give their names walk in downtown Havana, February 2, 2015. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

A rescuer saves a resident from a flooded area in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, July 2, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

An Afghan man prepares tea for customers at a roadside tea shop on the outskirts of Jalalabad February 2, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Parwiz)

A model poses backstage during the International Flamenco Fashion Show in Seville, Spain, on February 2, 2013. (Photo by Associated Press/Miguel Angel Morenatti)

Four-year-old Eve Hill enjoys the wet weather in York, northeast England on August 2, 2023. (Photo by James Glossop/The Times)

A pedestrian walks with an umbrella along a street during rainfall in Bengaluru on June 2, 2024. (Photo by Idrees Mohammed/AFP Photo)