This picture taken on February 1, 2015 shows participants competing in a tofu (beancurd) wrestling competition in Fogang county, south China's Guangdong province. Participants, mostly women, fight it out in an inflatable pool which is filled with nearly two tons of fresh milk and tofu, in a promotion to attract tourists for the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year holiday. The upcoming Chinese lunar new year of the sheep, which will fall on February 19 this year, marks the biggest festival of the year in China as hundreds of millions of people journey across the country to celebrate the season with their families. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (R) and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (L) visit Seppeltsfield Winery in Barossa Valley, Australia, 10 November 2015. The royal couple are on a 12-day tour visiting seven regions in New Zealand and three states and one territory in Australia. (Photo by Daniel Kalisz/EPA)

A Tengger tribesman prays at Mount Bromo during the annual Kasada ceremony in East Java on August 12, 2014. The Kasada ceremony is a festival held every 14th day of the Kasada month in the traditional Hindu lunar calender to honour Sang Hyang Widhi (God Almighty) and is based on the legend of Roro Anteng and Joko Seger from the Majapahit Kingdom, from which their Tengger tribe name originates. Hundreds of worshippers from the Tengger tribe offer food and livestock as a symbolic sacrifice which they throw into the crater for the blessings of safety and prosperity to their familyies and community. (Photo by Juni Kriswanto/AFP Photo)

A woman smokes a mask bong on the final day of Hempfest, Seattle's annual gathering to promote the legalization of marijuana, on August 17, 2014. (Photo by Jordan Stead/Seattlepi.com)

Ten-year-old Macy Friday, front left, reacts as she looks back at her family after meeting Hillary Clinton, front right, as she campaigns for U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., back, during a stop in the newly-renovated Union Station in Denver on Monday, October 13, 2014. Clinton appeared at an event to raise money for Udall's current re-election campaign and then headed to Las Vegas for another appearance on Monday night. (Photo by David Zalubowski/AP Photo)

Spanish legionnaires sing an anthem as they carry a statue of the Christ of Mena outside a church during a ceremony before they take part in the “Mena” brotherhood procession in Malaga, southern Spain, March 24, 2016. (Photo by Jon Nazca/Reuters)

In this February 19, 2017 photo, a statue of the Death Saint stands inside Mercy Church as Juan Carlos Avila Mercado gives a service, on the edge of Mexico City's Tepito neighborhood. “She chooses them and has always been with us”, said Avila, who says he is a Catholic priest, but who is not listed among the archdiocese's priests. “We are born and we die with death”. (Photo by Marco Ugarte/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.