A fisherman carries a sailfish on his head to the fish market in Hamarweyne near the port of Mogadishu on April, 4, 2016. (Photo by Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP Photo)

Ukrainians pour water on each other on a street in Lviv, Ukraine, 02 May 2016. The tradition of pouring water was an ancient spring ritual of cleansing on first Monday after Orthodox Easter. (Photo by Mykola Tys/EPA)

Anand Varma, a U.S. photographer working for the National Geographic, won the First Prize in the Nature Category, Stories, of the 2015 World Press Photo contest with his series of pictures, which includes this one of spores of a fungus landing on an ant, penetrating its exoskeleton and entering its brain, compelling the host to leave its normal habitat on the forest floor and scale a nearby tree, in this picture taken January 22, 2014 and released by the World Press Photo on February 12, 2015. (Photo by Anand Varma/Reuters/National Geographic/World Press Photo)

Two Scottish shorthair cats dressed with red hats are pictured during a cat exhibition in Bishkek, on October 16, 2016. Cat lovers from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan took part in the exhibition. (Photo by Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP Photo)

Japanese music duo Ami and Aya arrive for the Christian Dior Fall/Winter 2023-2024 ready-to-wear collection presented Tuesday, February 28, 2023 in Paris. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/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.

Participants ride horses, hold spears and wear historic armoured suits of the Middle Ages as they compete during the Saint George international knight tournament in Moscow, Russia, May 3, 2015. (Photo by Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

Indian dancers paint their body like tigers as they perform a Tiger dance during the International day of the Tiger in Calcutta, India, July 29, 2015. Students of Calcutta are taking part in an awareness campaign aiming to draw attention to the threats that tigers face due to habitat loss and poaching. (Photo by Piyal Adhikary/EPA)