A charred deer figure stands in the ruins of a devastated home, as the Eaton Fire continues, in Altadena, California, on January 14, 2025. (Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

In an aerial view, a flooded section of farmland is seen next to a home in Cadiz, Kentucky, U.S. April 18, 2025. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Reuters)

Russian soldiers write home while serving on the Eastern Front during World War I, circa 1915. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Father Christmas hands out presents to children at the Aid And Adoption Society home at Leytonstone. (Photo by Gerry Cranham/Fox Photos/Getty Images). 7th December 1938

A photo from Madonna’s high school yearbook at her childhood home in Rochester, Michigan, circa 1973. (Photo by Rebel Images/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Jenifer Lopez, 12, watches television at her home in Havana January 9, 2015. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

Pauline Torres carries belongings from her flooded Merced, Calif., home on Tuesday, January 10, 2023. (Photo by Noah Berger/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.