A military aircraft flies low through the Mach Loop in west-central Wales on September 25, 2025 during Cobra Warrior 25-2, one of Nato’s largest multinational air exercises. The operation, running across the UK until October 3, brings together air forces from the UK, US, Canada, Italy and Germany for three weeks of high-intensity training in challenging low-level environments. (Photo by Tony Marsh)

Alpine driver Pierre Gasly of France slides off the track during a qualifying session at the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix auto race, Friday, November 21, 2025 in Las Vegas. (Photo by Nick Didlick/AP Photo)

Visitors pass an exhibit for Sculpture by the Sea, along the coastal walk from Bondi to Tamarama in Sydney, Australia on October 24, 2025. The annual event is Australia’s largest annual outdoor sculpture exhibition. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

To draw the public's attention to a new line of bathing suits, a Tokyo department store used live models to show off the suits on June 5, 1950. The rain didn't bother the curious, and both the girls and the crowd seemed to like the idea of staring at each other through the glass. (Photo by AP Photo via The Atlantic)

Ethnic Miao women in traditional costumes take part in a tug of war as they celebrate the local ethnic Miao's new year at a village in Rongshui Miao Autonomous county, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China January 5, 2019. (Photo by Reuters/China Stringer Network)

Snakes hang from a wooden cabinet marked with the Chinese characters “poisonous snake”, at a snake soup shop ahead of the Spring Festival in Hong Kong January 29, 2013. (Photo by Bobby Yip/Reuters)

Women play soccer as the Tungurahua volcano spews a column of ash during an eruption in Huambalo, Ecuador, Saturday, March 5, 2016. Tungurahua is 16,480 feet (5,023 meters) high and has been active since 1999. (Photo by Dolores Ochoa/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.