English television personality, Love Island's Faye Winter is seen painted as a Killer Whale as part of a PETA protest photocall for marine animals in London's Piccadilly Circus on November 18, 2022. (Photo by The Mega Agency)

A doll holding a replica of a AK47 gun is set on a tailpiece of a rocket on a roadside in a village near the town of Avdiivka, Donetsk region, on June 28, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Genya Savilov/AFP Photo)

An Israeli protester lifts her T-shirt next to Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men outside an army recruiting office in the town of Kiryat Ono near Tel Aviv on March 5, 2024, during a demonstration against their exemption from serving in the army. Since the October 7 attack by Palestinian militants, the question surrounding whether the insular community, whose members see army service as conflicting with their religious duties, should be obligated to serve has sparked debate and led to protests against their decades-long exemptions. (Photo by Jack Guez/AFP Photo)

A caterpillar driven ferry with a 24 horsepower engine takes holidaymakers from the mainland at Bigbury in Devon to Burgh Island, a quarter of a mile away. (Photo by Reg Speller/Fox Photos/Getty Images). 4th April 1935

Is it a leaf? Is it tree bark? No, it’s the Satanic leaf-tailed gecko. Cleverly disguised as a rotting leaf, Madagascar’s camouflage king has red eyes, pointy horns and a taste for night hunting: it’s nature’s most devilish deceiver. The twisted body and veiny skin echo the detail of a dry leaf, which ensures the gecko blends in with its forest home. The mottled tail appears to have sections missing, as though it has withered over time. This mini-monster epitomises survival of the fittest, having adapted gradually to become today’s extraordinary leaf impersonator. (Photo by Thomas Marent/ARDEA)

A robot Ecce by the Robot studio is pictured at the world's largest industrial technology fair, the Hannover Messe, in Hanover April 13, 2015. (Photo by Wolfgang Rattay/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.

The main church in the town of San Damian Texoloc, Mexico stands in front of the Popocatepetl volcano as is spews ash and vapor early Tuesday, July 9, 2013. Last Saturday, Mexico's National Center for Disaster Prevention raised the volcano alert from Stage 2 Yellow to Stage 3 Yellow, the final step before a Red alert, when possible evacuations could be ordered after the Popocatepetl volcano spit out a cloud of ash and vapor 2 miles (3 kilometers) high over several days of eruptions. (Photo by J. Guadalupe Perez/AP Photo)