American media personality and YouTuber Emma Chamberlain poses for photographers upon arrival at the Vogue World event on Sunday, June 23, 2024 in Paris. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP Photo)

A person in a costume poses during the 2024 New York Comic Con, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City, on October 18, 2024. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

Keen diver Yusuke Fukami fulfilled a personal dream by snapping a cartoon-like Costasiella sea slug while in Bali in the last decade of December 2024. (Photo by Yusuke Fukami/South West News Service)

French television personality Iris Mittenaere poses on the red carpet during arrivals for the screening of the film “Alpha” in competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, on May 19, 202. (Photo by Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters)

A person is detained after a shooting incident of Slovak PM Robert Fico, after a Slovak government meeting in Handlova, Slovakia, on May 15, 2024. (Photo by Radovan Stoklasa/Reuters)

American model, golf instructor, former professional golfer and social media personality Paige Spiranac drove fans wild by dressing up as Jessica Rabbit for Halloween on October 30, 2025. (Photoby X @PaigeSpiranac)

TV personality Meredith Marks at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas, NV on Friday, November 14, 2025. (Photo by: Griffin Nagel/Bravo via Getty Images)

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.