A series of Japanese good luck charms, called “Daruma”, are lined up ahead of the major national elections November 9, 2003 in Takasaki, Japan. The Daruma is said to bring exceptional good luck in all walks of life, but is used especially during election time by all candidates. People think that if they face a difficult situation, as symbolized by the doll that returns to its original position when knocked over, they will always bounce back. (Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images)

Bull Rider Dalton Kasel rides The Good Stuff during the second round of the PBR Unleash The Beast Monster Energy Buckoff at Madison Square Garden in New York, January 8, 2022. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP Photo)

English actor Eddie Redmayne poses with fans at the premiere of “The Good Nurse” & Golden Eye Award for Eddie Redmayne during the 18th Zurich Film Festival at Kongresshaus on September 25, 2022 in Zurich, Switzerland. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images for ZFF)

Australian professional boxers Ebanie Bridges (L) and Shannon O'Connell weigh-in ahead of their IBF World Bantamweight Title fight during the weigh in at Aspire, Leeds, United Kingdom on Friday, December 9, 2022. (Photo by Tim Goode/PA Wire)

“Start your day with a good breakfast together”, 2009. “There was this trend of eating sushi from a woman’s naked body. So when I found the perfect papaya, I knew exactly how to shoot it”. (Photo by Pixy Liao/The Guardian)

Australian professional boxer Ebanie Bridges at the weigh-in ahead of their IBF World Bantamweight Title fight against Shannon O'Connell during the weigh in at Aspire, Leeds, United Kingdom on Friday, December 9, 2022. (Photo by Tim Goode/PA Wire)

A fashion fair was organized in the Rajićeva Shopping Center in Belgrade on December 24, 2024. The first floor of the shopping center was transformed into a catwalk, and the models of the Alekk fashion agency brilliantly expressed the idea that fashion is not just clothes, but an attitude that, with the selection of quality pieces from good brands, becomes unmistakably fashionable and easy to wear. (Photo by Nenad Karlic)

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.