It’s time to start watching for Comet PANSTARRS, one of two comets to get excited about in 2013. Photo: This image provided by NASA shoaws the comet PANSTARRS as seen from Mount Dale, Western Australia on March 5, 2013. According to NASA on March 10, it will make its closest approach to the sun about 28 million miles (45 million kilometers) away. As it continues its nightly trek across the sky, the comet may get lost in the sun's glare but should return and be visible to the naked eye by March 12. (Photo by AP Photo/NASA)

A participant holds balloons before the Annual March against Homophobia and Transphobia in Havana, May 14, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

This picture taken on June 1, 2019 shows Alex Gao trying to balance a book on his head during an etiquette and manners class in central Shanghai. Against a soundtrack of classical music, children learn social skills, dining manners and deportment in the class, which costs $390 for four hours of practical instruction per student. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP Photo)

Actress Bai Ling poses for a picture in front of St. Basil's Cathedral at the Red Square in Moscow, Russia, July 1, 2015. (Photo by Ivan Burnyashev/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.

A demonstrator throw a firebomb during clashes with Turkish riot police officers in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, May 1, 2015. The government assigned 30,000 police officers backed by helicopters as workers and demonstrators determined to defy a government ban, tried to march to iconic Taksim Square, where 35 people were killed during May Day celebration in 1977. (Photo by Emrah Gurel/AP Photo)

Members of the Wasteland Warriors from the movie “MadMax” pose during the Wacken Open Air festival on August 4, 2016 in Wacken, Germany. Wacken is a village in northern Germany with a population of 1,800 that has hosted the annual festival, which attracts heavy metal fans from around the world, since 1990. (Photo by Alexander Koerner/Getty Images)

Dancers from the Moulin Rouge troupe are reflected in a mirror as they prepare themselves prior to a press photo shoot at the National Theatre in Warsaw, on October 26, 2023. The famous cabaret will take part in the show “French Touch La Belle Vie” highlighting the Franco-Polish friendship. (Photo by Wojtek Radwanski/AFP Photo)