A demonstrator takes part in the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) pride march in London, Britain, June 27, 2020. (Photo by Simon Dawson/Reuters)

Girls rest on stairs at the China Digital Entertainment Expo and Conference (ChinaJoy) in Shanghai, China July 27, 2017. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

A reveller takes part in the Holi Party Festival at Niemeyer Center in Aviles, northern Spain, August 27, 2016. (Photo by Eloy Alonso/Reuters)

American actress Kristen Stewart arrives at the Oscars on Sunday, March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jae C. Hong/AP Photo)

Residents wearing masks rest in the shade near a graffiti of a dragon, Friday, May 27, 2022, in Beijing. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

A handler displays newly born American green Iguanas at the Snake park in Chennai on May 27, 2024. (Photo by R.Satish Babu/AFP Photo)

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.

Combine harvesters work on a wheat field of the Solgonskoye farming company near the village of Talniki, southwest from Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, August 27, 2015. Russia, one of the world's top wheat exporters, will harvest its third-largest grain crop in post-Soviet history this year, leading Russian consultancy SovEcon said on August 27 after upgrading its forecast. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)