Police officers with a sniffer dog check a railway as the Soyuz MS spacecraft for the next International Space Station (ISS) crew of Kate Rubins of the U.S., Anatoly Ivanishin of Russia and Takuya Onishi of Japan is ready to be transported from an assembling hangar to the launchpad ahead of its launch scheduled on July 7, at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan July 4, 2016. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

A devotee with his body painted poses as he waits to perform during a ritual as part of the annual Shiva Gajan religious festival at Sona Palasi village, in West Bengal, India, April 11, 2016. Devotees offer sacrifices and perform acts of devotion during the festival in the hopes of winning the favour of Hindu god Shiva and ensuring the fulfillment of their wishes, and also to mark the end of the Bengali calendar year. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

Palestinian woman Jihan Abu Muhsen prepares her donkey with her son Kareem before going work collecting bricks for sale from sites of demolished buildings, at her dwelling in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 8, 2016. Abu Muhsen gathers bricks from the sites of demolished buildings and sells them to recycling factories. She earns around 20 shekels ($5) a day and her 10-year-old son Mohammad helps her when he is not at school. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

In this July 24, 2016 photo, a pilgrim takes a bath in a sacred mud pool during the annual Voodoo celebration in Plaine-du-Nord, Haiti, Saturday, July 23, 2016. Pilgrims come to bathe in the mud and make offerings expecting a miracle. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo)

A participant in the Borodino Battle re-enactment before the show at the Borodino Field in the Moscow Region on September 4, 2016. The Battle of Borodino, fought on September 7, 1812, was a battle fought in the Napoleonic Wars during the French invasion of Russia. The fighting involved around 250,000 troops and left at least 70,000 casualties, making Borodino the deadliest day of the Napoleonic Wars. (Photo by Kirill Kallinikov/Sputnik)

Vivid colors and bizarre shapes come together in a false-color image that could be an illustration for a fantasy story. This labyrinth of exotic features winds its way along the edge of Russia’s Chaunskaya Bay in northeastern Siberia, seen as a vivid blue half-circle at the bottom of the image Two major rivers, the Chaun and Palyavaam, flow into the bay, which in turn opens into the Arctic Ocean. Ribbon lakes and bogs are present throughout the area, created by depressions left by receding glaciers. (Photo by USGS/NASA)

“Einar Erici (1885–1965) was a physician by profession, working at a tuberculosis hospital in Stockholm, even running a private medical practice. He was by then the most renowned Swedish expert of church organs and organ builders, and his archival collection is today held by the Swedish National Heritage Board. This archive includes mostly writings, such as letters and manuscripts for published articles and essays, but also more than 2 000 black and white photos – original prints, glass plates and film negatives”. – Swedish National Heritage Board

Photo: Priest, Valamo Monastery, Karelia, Russia (then Finland), 1930s. Father Venerius with a birchbark basket. (Photo by Einar Erici)

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.