Harris & Ewing Inc. photographed people, events, and architecture, particularly in Washington, D.C., during the period 1905-1945. Photo: Tests of Curtiss Palne for Army, Single Control. Created by Harris & Ewing. Published in 1912.

Four young, trendsetting architectural offices from Denmark, Holland and France along with PensionDenmark are the clever ones behind the Iceberg – a unique house building, sporting 11 pinnacles, situated at the outermost corner of Aarhus Harbour, thus having a spectacular view of Aarhus Bay and Kalø Cove and Aarhus City.

Children, wearing red neckerchiefs, a symbol of the Pioneer Organization, salute during a ceremony for the inauguration of 18 new members at a local school in the southern settlement of Kazminskoye in Stavropol region, Russia, November 19, 2015. Early pro-communist youth movements, which appeared in Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, were reformed into the Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union. While the organization lost its dominance among students in post-Soviet Russia, some educational institutions and families still carry on this tradition. (Photo by Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters)

Two wolfhounds take part in a dogfight in a stadium in the Kyrgyzstan capital Bishkek on November 5, 2017, during fights organized by a local breeders aiming to improve the Asian Shepherd breed, organizers said. (Photo by Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP Photo)

A man and a woman jump over a bonfire during Ivan Kupala Day celebrations held by the Belarusian State Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Lifestyle in the village of Ozertso near Minsk, Belarus on July 4, 2020. Ivan Kupala Day, also known as Ivana-Kupala or Kupala Night, is a traditional pagan holiday celebrated in eastern Slavic cultures. Various rituals are traditionally performed on Kupala Night, including making flower wreaths, fortune-telling, jumping over bonfires, and burning a wheel-like effigy symbolizing the sun. (Photo by Natalia Fedosenko/TASS)

Women spray their designs on a wall during a graffiti class offered by the LATA 65 organization in Lisbon, Portugal May 14, 2015. The LATA 65 organization is an initiative for the elderly in the area of urban art. Since it began in 2012, they have introduced the world of graffiti to over 100 senior citizens, giving workshops in different neighborhoods of Lisbon. (Photo by Rafael Marchante/Reuters)

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.