A wounded member of the Afghan police reaction force waits for treatment in Alingar, Laghman province, on April 30, 2012. A bomb exploded next to opium poppy fields during a poppy eradication campaign in, wounding two Afghan policemen, police officials said. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

A man wears a sweater covered in Irish themed pins as he stands with thousands of spectators to watch the 254th New York City St. Patrick's Day parade up 5th Avenue in the Manhattan Borough of New York, March 17, 2015. (Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters)

A devotee in trance mimics a beast during a religious tattoo festival at Wat Bang Phra monastery, where devotees believe that their tattoos have mystical powers, in Nakhon Pathom province, Thailand, March 16, 2019. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

An artist (R) gives finishing touches to a New Year mural painted on his house in Chennai on December 29, 2022. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

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.

In this Wednesday, September 17, 2014 photo, the sun shines over a field of sunflowers in Walkill, N.Y. (Photo by John DeSanto/AP Photo/Times Herlad-Record)

Lindsay Knutson plays in the heavy snow with her family dog, Aspen, and daughter Flora Bejblik, 4, cq, as her husband Bob Bejblik, rear left, shovels, Tuesday, March 5, 2013 in southwest Minneapolis. The National Weather Service predicted a two-day snow total of 8 to 12 inches for much of southeastern and east-central Minnesota, including the Twin Cities. (Photo by Elizabeth Flores/AP Photo/The Star Tribune)

An assault at 125th Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Harlem, after a basketball game on August 9, 2020. Police vehicles responded but no officers intervened. (Photo by G.N.Miller/The New York Post)