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.

“Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening. The event is described by many participants as an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A fireball billows up from a 52-foot tall wooden man as it goes up in flames September 2, 2000 during the15th annual Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach, Nevada. Despite high winds, dust storms, and a bit of rain, some 27,000 people camped out on a remote desert playa, or dry lake, for the week-long counter-cultural celebration of art and “radical self-expression”. (Photo by David McNew/Newsmakers)

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is seen in an aerial view on February 20, 2014 in the Mojave Desert in California near Primm, Nevada. The largest solar thermal power-tower system in the world, owned by NRG Energy, Google and BrightSource Energy, opened last week in the Ivanpah Dry Lake and uses 347,000 computer-controlled mirrors to focus sunlight onto boilers on top of three 459-foot towers, where water is heated to produce steam to power turbines providing power to more than 140,000 California homes. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

The valley of La Geria, which has been declared a 'Protected Area', is Lanzarote’s main wine-growing region, occupying about 20 square miles (52 square kilometres) and stretching on both sides of the road from Masdache to Uga and right up to the volcanic slopes. This area produces most of Lanzarote’s excellent wines, of which 75 per cent are made from the Malvasía grape, one of the oldest known grape varieties. Best known as a honey-coloured, very sweet wine with a rich flavour, already praised by Shakespeare hundreds of years ago, today the Malvasía grape produces a wide variety of quality white, red or rosé wines, from very sweet to very dry.

“Yucca is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the agave family, Agavaceae. Its 40-50 species are notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitish flowers. They are native to the hot and dry (arid) parts of North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Early reports of the species were confused with the cassava (Manihot esculenta). Consequently, Linnaeus mistakenly derived the generic name from the Carib word for the latter, yuca. It is also colloquially known in the midwest United States as “Ghosts in the graveyard”, as it is commonly found growing in rural graveyards and when in bloom the flowers appear as an apparition floating.” – Wikipedia

Photo: A yucca standing among flowers bursts forth a very large stalk of flowers as a heavy wildflower bloom on June 21, 2005 in the Angeles National Forest northwest of La Canada, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

An aerial view of the Atibainha dam, part of the Cantareira reservoir, during a drought in Nazare Paulista, Sao Paulo state November 18, 2014. Brazil's worst drought in 80 years has left the Cantareira system, that provides greater Sao Paulo with most of its water, with the lowest water level on record, with daily rationing becoming common in the region's smaller cities, according to the state authorities and the two main reservoirs serving metropolitan Sao Paulo, South America's largest city, could dry out by February if relief does not arrive in the upcoming rainy season. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

Floating on clear deep water and reflections near the cave entrance. Visitors can either bring their own kayaks or rent boats from the local community to paddle deep inside the cave and marvel at its wonders on March 2015 at Tham Khoun Ex, Laos. Tham Khoun Xe, commonly known as the Xe Bang Fai River Cave, in Laos, has over 15km of passages filled with awe-inspiring views and wide expanses of water. Photographer, John Spies, 59, captured scenes from the entrances of the huge underground river passages, intricate cave formations and views from a passage high above the water. The cave is formed by the Xe Bang Fai river, a major tributary of the Mekong and in the dry season can be traversed using inflatable kayaks. (Photo by John Spies/Barcroft Media/ABACAPress)

Ahead of May Day, AFP' s video and photo teams spoke to men and women around the globe whose jobs are becoming increasingly rare, particularly as technology transforms societies. Here: Mohammad Ashgar, 65, an Indian rickshaw puller, poses for a photograph next to his rickshaw in Kolkata on April 21, 2018. (Photo by Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP Photo)