Jimmy Bryan of Phoenix, Ariz., gets the checkered victory flag at the Indiana State Fairgrounds September 17, 1955 as he wins the “Hoosier Hundred” for the second consecutive year. Bryan averaged 83.98 miles an hour for the 100-lap, 100-mile AAA big car race. (Photo by AP Photo)

Lebanese women smoke nargileh (water pipe) and watch a streaming broadcast of the FIFA World Cup 2022 group G soccer match between Brazil and Switzerland, at a café-restaurant in the area of Sabtiyeh, north of Beirut, on November 28, 2022. Lebanon being hit hard by the economic crisis, the country did not obtain the rights to broadcast the 2022 World Cup this year, depriving Lebanese fans of the World Cup. (Photo by Joseph Eid/AFP Photo)

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)

A drone view shows the Folkestone White Horse with a red nose that has been placed to make the landmark overlooking the town look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer ahead of Christmas, in Folkestone, Britain, on December 19, 2024. (Photo by Chris J. Ratcliffe/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.

Julian Ryerson of Borussia Dortmund during the Bundesliga match between Borussia Dortmund and 1. FC Union Berlin at Signal Iduna Park on April 8, 2023 in Dortmund, Germany. (Photo by Alexandre Simoes/Borussia Dortmund via Getty Images)

German flying ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen (1892–1918) also known as The Red Baron with his dog Moritz, circa 1916.