A Maasai woman smiles as Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall is presented with a traditional Maasai necklace as Prince Charles, Prince of Wales looks on during a visit to Majengo Maasai Boma on November 9, 2011 in Arusha, Tanzania. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

“Richard Wilson (born May 24, 1953) is a sculptor, installation artist and musician. Wilson's work is characterised by architectural concerns with volume, illusionary spaces and auditory perception”. – Wikipedia

Photo: An installation by the artist Richard Wilson, entitled “Turning the Place Over”, is built into the condemned Cross Keys House in Moorfields as part of the Capital of Culture for 2008, on June 25, 2007 in Liverpool, England. The piece consists of an 8 metre ovoid cut from the building's facade that oscillates in three dimensions. (Photo by Jim Dyson/Getty Images)

A picture composed by the French street artist JR is plastered to a wall under a highway as part of a community project called “Through A Mother's Eyes”, which involves members of the economically distressed neighborhood of Hunts Point in images taken by and of themselves on June 30, 2011 in New York City. JR, a recent TED prize winner, has staged similar projects around the world that look to transform high crime and impoverished neighborhoods into spaces for street art combined with the celebration of community. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A crew members walks on the flight deck past Super Etendard fighter jets aboard France's Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier on missino in the Gulf, January 29, 2016. (Photo by Philippe Wojazer/Reuters)

Challenger Deep Submersible is shown for the first time at the Virgin Group Media Announcement by the President & CEO of Virgin Airlines Sir Richard Branson at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club on April 5, 2011 in Balboa, California. (Photo by John M. Heller/Getty Images)

A Penarth dance hall has banned chewing gum on the premises because dancers have complained that their feet keep sticking to the floor. (Photo by Richards/Fox Photos/Getty Images). 16th July 1936

A man walks beside a “Wrinkles Of The City” creation near the Berlin cathedral in Berlin April 19, 2013. (Photo by Fabrizio Bensch/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.