Festivalgoers dance during the Balaton Sound music festival in Zamardi, Hungary, July 5, 2018. Balaton Sound is one of Europe's largest open air electronic music festivals. Held annually since 2007 on the southern bank of Lake Balaton, Hungary, it features live acts and DJ's from all around the world, from established artists to new names. The event was co-created by the organizers of Sziget Festival. (Photo by Bernadett Szabo/Reuters)

Music fans arrive in the mud and the rain at the Glastonbury Festival site at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 22, 2011 in Glastonbury, England. Heavy rain and mud greeted music fans as the gates to the five-day festival opened to the public this morning. This year the festival will feature headline acts U2, Coldplay and Beyonce. The festival, which started in 1970 when several hundred hippies paid 1 GBP to watch Marc Bolan, has grown into Europe's largest music festival attracting more than 175,000 people over five days. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

AKB48 perform during the MTV Video Music Aid Japan at Makuhari Messe on June 25, 2011 in Chiba, Japan. (Photo by Koki Nagahama/Getty Images)

People participate in the annual Afropunk Music festival on August 27, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

DJ David Guetta (R) and rapper Nicki Minaj perform onstage during the 2017 Billboard Music Awards at T-Mobile Arena on May 21, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

“A topless women's rights activist hacked down a Christian cross in the Ukrainian capital Kiev with a chain saw on Friday in protest at the prosecution of the Russian feminist punk band, p*ssy Riot”. – Reuters. (Photo by FEMEN)

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.

A rescue worker holds an injured boy after what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in Idlib city, Syria December 20, 2015. (Photo by Ammar Abdullah/Reuters)