An alien-shaped hot air balloon flies during a mass launch at the annual Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, near Bristol, Britain, on August 8, 2025. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

Olympic gold medalist Arisa Trew of Australia competes on the vert ramp during the second day of “Exposure 2025” an annual all-girls skateboarding contest in Encinitas, California, U.S., November 2, 2025. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

American singer-songwriter Madonna shows off some bling while hitching a ride on November 26, 2025. (Photo by madonna/Instagram)

Bronze medallist Norway's Line Flem Hoest jumps into the water as she celebrates at the end of the women's ILCA 6 single-handed dinghy medal race during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games sailing competition at the Roucas-Blanc Marina in Marseille on August 7, 2024. (Photo by Lisi Niesner/Reuters)

2014 Underwater Photography Photo Contest winners, Wide angle marine life category, 3rd place. (Photo by Valda Fraser/UnderwaterPhotography.com)

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.

An Anti-Balaka fighter, member of a militia opposed to the Seleka rebel group, puts a knife to his throat showing what he would do to any Seleka, on the outskirts of the Boy-Rabe neighborhood in Bangui on December 14, 2013. France raised alarm on December 13 over worsening violence in the Central African Republic, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged warring Christians and Muslims to stop the bloodshed that has left more than 600 dead in the past week. (Photo by Ivan Lieman/AFP Photo)

In this photo taken Sunday, October 5, 2014, a library official shows a 13th-century German prayer book containing the earliest evidence of the Yiddish language, at Israel's National Library in Jerusalem. This week, Israel's National Library gave The Associated Press a rare peek at a selection of rare historical manuscripts in its collection. (Photo by Sebastian Scheiner/AP Photo)