Penny Verdin displays a sleeping squirrel she helped rescue after it was injured during Hurricane Ida, Saturday, September 4, 2021, in Dulac, La. (Photo by John Locher/AP Photo)

A woman inspects artwork by Iranian artist Farrokh Mahdavi during a preview of the National Gallery of Victoria's (NGV) Triennial 2023, an exhibition featuring work by over 120 contemporary artists, designers and collectives, in Melbourne on December 1, 2023. (Photo by William West/AFP Photo)

Kirby waits to be judged during the 44th annual Drake Relays Beautiful Bulldog Contest, Monday, April 24, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa. The pageant kicks off the Drake Relays festivities at Drake University where a bulldog is the mascot. (Photo by Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo)

A visitor takes a picture of the painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972” by British painter David Hockney during a press visit ahead of the opening of the exhibition “David Hockney 25” at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France, on April 8, 2025. (Photo by Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

Masked participants stand in St.Mark's Square during the Carnival on February 10, 2007 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro). P.S. All pictures are presented in high resolution.

Miss USA Alyssa Campanella arrives at the 2nd Annual American Giving Awards at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on December 7, 2012 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage)

A garbage collector, with his horse and cart, prepares to unload rubbish at the municipal dump in Nezahualcoyotl, on the outskirts of Mexico City, February 18, 2015. Hundreds of horse or donkey-drawn carts will disappear from the streets of a municipality in the state of Mexico, located on the outskirts of Mexico City, and will be replaced by motorized vehicles, local authorities said. (Photo by Henry Romero/Reuters)

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.