Shortlisted: Sólheimasandur aircraft crash site, Iceland by Ollie Conway. (Photo by Ollie Conway/Historic Photographer of the Year Awards 2019/The Guardian)

English singer, songwriter and model Sophie Ellis-Bextor performs at G-A-Y at The Astoria on February 17, 2007 in London, England. (Photo by Jo Hale/Getty Images)

Racegoers brave the conditions during 2022 Melbourne Cup Day at Flemington Racecourse on November 1, 2022 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Martin Keep/Getty Images for VRC)

Ellesse Janda welcomes a spring rainbow at Cresswell in Northumberland, United Kingdom on March 17, 2023. (Photo by Ian Sproat/Picture Exclusive)

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.

Four-year-old Solaris Arias (right) jumps through water spraying from an open fire hydrant in Providence, Rhode Island, on June 20, 2012. Much of the state remained under a heat advisory Tuesday afternoon because of the steamy air mass that has moved into the region resulting in temperatures in the 90s. (Photo by Steven Senne/AP Photo)

This photo taken late on February 21, 2021 in Milo, near Catania, Sicily, and obtained on February 22, 2021 from Italian news agency Ansa, shows lava flowing along the sides of the southern crater of the Etna volcano as a new eruptive episode of tall lava fountains, known as paroxysm, occurred. (Photo by ANSA/Handout via AFP Photo)

Masked revellers pose in St. Mark's Square during the Venice Carnival, February 7, 2015. The Venetian carnival started on January 31 and runs until February 17, forty days before Easter celebrations. (Photo by Stefano Rellandini/Reuters)