Faithful carry a boat out to sea, filled with offerings to Yemanja, the African sea goddess, during a ceremony honoring the deity in Montevideo, Uruguay, Saturday, February 2, 2013. Thousands of worshippers come to the beach in Montevideo on her feast day, February 2, bearing candles, flowers, perfumes and fruit to show their gratitude for her blessings bestowed upon them. The belief in the goddess sprouts from Umbanda, a blend of religions that include African, Catholicism and Spiritism. (Photo by Matilde Campodonico/AP Photo)

Crashed cars in Finchley Road, north London. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). May 1924

The dashboard of a 1980 Teal Type 35 Bugatti (estimate £28,000 - £35,000) on display inside the Royal Horticultural Halls on April 11, 2017 in London, England. Coys automobile auctioneers are putting almost 70 classic cars up for auction in their Spring Classics sale in Westminster tomorrow, April 12, 2017. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

(L-R) Shiri Appleby and Kevin Zegers of “What Just Happened??! with Fred Savage” attend the Pizza Hut Lounge at 2019 Comic-Con International: San Diego on July 19, 2019 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Presley Ann/Getty Images for Pizza Hut)

A staff member at the Rising Sun Anger Release Bar suits up in protective gear August 8, 2006 in Nanjing of Jiangsu Province, China. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

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.

A Brazil fan waits for the start of the group A World Cup soccer match between Brazil and Croatia, the opening game of the tournament, in the Itaquerao Stadium in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, June 12, 2014. (Photo by Felipe Dana/AP Photo)

The possible surface of TRAPPIST-1f, one of seven newly discovered planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system that scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground based telescopes have discovered. (Photo by Reuters/NASA/JPL-Caltech)