A young fan cheers while waiting for the ticker tape parade to celebrate the U.S. women's soccer team World Cup victory, Friday, July 10, 2015, in New York. The World Cup winning U.S. women's football team rolled up New York City's “Canyon of Heroes” on Friday, with a blizzard of confetti swirling overhead in the first ticker-tape parade honouring a women's sports team. (Photo by Adam Hunger/AP Photo)

Gisele Marie, a Muslim woman and professional heavy metal musician, holds her Gibson Flying V electric guitar as walks down stairs at the end of a fund raising concert for the Syrian refugees in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro November 8, 2015. Based in Sao Paulo, Marie, 42, is the granddaughter of German Catholics, and converted to Islam several months after her father passed away in 2009. Marie, who wears the burka, has been fronting her brothers' heavy metal band "Spectrus" since 2012. (Photo by Nacho Doce/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.

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.

A Brazilian Navy member ejects spent cartridges while shooting rubber bullets during an exhibition of their operational capacity to combat terrorist attacks and riots ahead of the FIFA Confederations Cup and World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro on May 27, 2013. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)

Players battle for the ball during their match at the swamp soccer China tournament in Beijing, June 26, 2014. The 32 teams from across the country participated in the soccer event to celebrate the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

A Honduras fan cheers for her team before the start of the Group E football match between Honduras and Switzerland at the Amazonia Arena in Manaus during the 2014 FIFA World Cup on June 25, 2014. (Photo by Rodrigo Arangua/AFP Photo)

Aerobatic pilot Sean D. Tucker flies in the two-seat Oracle Extra airplane over downtown Chicago skyline, Wednesday, June 8, 2016. Tucker will perform before the start of of the America's Cup World Series racing on Saturday and Sunday. (Photo by Kiichiro Sato/AP Photo)