Young Chinese football players help an injured player off the field during training at the Evergrande International Football School on June 12, 2014 near Qingyuan in Guangdong Province, China. The sprawling 167-acre campus is the brainchild of property tycoon Xu Jiayin, whose ambition is to train a generation of young athletes to establish China as a football powerhouse. The school is considered the largest football academy in the world with 2400 students, more than 50 pitches and a squad of Spanish coaches through a partnership with Real Madrid. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

The zombies, cowgirls, and witches were out in force Saturday night on Clematis Street as thousands of people came to Moonfest to celebrate Halloween. They came from Broward County, Boynton Beach, Wellington, Port St. Lucie, and as far away as Germany and Sweden. Photo: Joe Smith, 60, Boca Raton. (Photo by Thomas Cordy/The Palm Beach Post)

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.

Women Wrestlers, Bolivia. Lucha libre (Bolivian wrestling) is one of the most popular sports in the country. Women wrestlers are known as cholitas and have in the last ten years become popular in the sport. Here, Carmen Rosa and Yulia la Pacena perform in a benefit show to raise money for the bathrooms of a school in La Paz, Bolivia, 26 June 2011. (Photo by Daniele Tamagni)

“On Friday, after something of a show trial, three young women in a Russian punk band were found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison for an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral earlier this year”. – Daniel Schwartz via CBC News

Photo: A woman wears on her chest the text “free p*ssy riot” as a demonstration by supporters of the jailed feminist punk band p*ssy Riot takes place outside the Russian Embassy on August 17, 2012 in London, England. The three women who staged an anti-Kremlin protest in a church in February, were found guilty today of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, and could face a three-year jail sentence. Supporters are gathering in several cities around the world today as a mark of solidarity. (Photo by Dan Kitwood)

Wearing a satin and lastex top and a skirt made of fishnet Ann Evors, a Paramount player, poses for the cameramen on the beach, circa 1928. (Photo by Central Press)

Women playing in the street as the snow falls on Johannesburg for the first time in seventeen years. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images). 1st September 1962

British born leading lady Elizabeth Taylor feeds the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, London. (Photo by Chris Ware/Keystone/Getty Images). November 1948