Flashmob: Water Battle on All-Russian Exhibition Center in Moscow, Russia, on August 5, 2012. (Photo by Lilja Dal)

A jogger runs on the bank of Donaukanal channel in central Vienna, Austria, September 5, 2016. (Photo by Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters)

A worker unloads fish from a taxi boot at a fish market in Kolkata, India on February 5, 2018. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

A man pulls a cart with collapsed cardboard boxes past boutiques in the Sinchon district in Seoul, May 5, 2015. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Children react as they celebrate Guy Fawkes day in Soweto, South Africa, on November 5, 2014. (Photo by Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)

People on inflatable boats enjoy the weather on the Lake Lucerne in Sisikon, Switzerland, August 5, 2018. (Photo by Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

The moon rises on the behind the “Torchbearer” statue in Hannover, Germany, Wednesday, November 5, 2025. (Photo by Julian Stratenschulte/dpa via AP 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.