Fighters from the Democratic Forces of Syria prepare their weapons in the southwestern countryside of Hasaka, Syria February 17, 2016. Picture taken February 17, 2016. (Photo by Rodi Said/Reuters)

Women comfort each other as they mourn over the death of a family member who was killed in a bomb blast, at a local hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, March, 27, 2016. A bomb blast in a park in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore has killed tens of people and wounded scores, a health official said. (Photo by K.M. Chuadary/AP Photo)

A couple sunbath on the beach in Ostrowo, northern Poland, July 20, 2015. Picture taken July 20, 2015. (Photo by Kacper Pempel/Reuters)

The Enemy, 1944. With the outbreak of world war two, photojournalism was enlisted in defence of Mother Russia. In this photo by Anatoli Egorov, who was wounded in action, corporal Stepan Vasiljevich Ovcharenko shoots at enemy troops with a machine gun. (Photo by Anatoli Egorov/Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography)

Beyonce performs during the Formation World Tour at Raymond James Stadium on Friday, April 29, 2016, in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Frank Micelotta/Invision for Parkwood Entertainment/AP 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)

At least 43 people have been killed and more than 200 others wounded in an attack by Somali Islamist militants on a Nairobi shopping mall, the Kenyan Red Cross said on Sunday. The Somali Islamist group al Shabaab claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack on the Kenyan capital’s Westgate mall, which is frequented by Westerners as well as Kenyans. Several foreigners, including a Canadian diplomat, were among the dead. Photo: Security officers secure an area inside the Westgate Shopping Centre. (Photo by Siegfried Modola/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.