Framed by the setting sun, an American Bison grazes at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve on Tuesday, April 28, 2015, near Strong City, Kan. The buffalo herd at Tallgrass is one of the few herds of wild bison left in the United States. (Photo by Travis Heying/The Wichita Eagle via AP Photo)

Participants of the techno-parade “Zug der Liebe” (Train of love) dance on a street in Berlin, Germany July 25, 2015. The “Zug der Liebe” is the successor to the “Loveparade”, which in its heyday attracted up to 100,000 participants and ended in disaster and tragedy in 2010 when 21 people died and over 500 were injured due to suffocation from overcrowding at the “Loveparade” in Duisburg. (Photo by Axel Schmidt/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.

An Iraqi man comforts his 4-year-old son at a regroupment center for POWs of the 101st Airborne Division near An Najaf, Iraq, March 31, 2003. The man was seized in An Najaf with his son and the U.S. military did not want to separate them. (Photo by Jean-Marc Bouju/Associated Press)

Marek Jama performs during the gala of the 41 st Monte- Carlo International Circus Festival in Monaco on January 25, 2017. (Photo by Eric Gaillard/AFP Photo)

A vendor drinks water as she waits for customers at a roadside flower market in Ahmedabad, India, February 8, 2017. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

Negin Ekhpulwak, leader of the Zohra orchestra, an ensemble of 35 women, practises on a piano at Afghanistan's National Institute of Music, in Kabul, Afghanistan April 9, 2016. Playing instruments was banned under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and even today, many conservative Muslims frown on most forms of music. Living in an orphanage in the capital, Kabul, 19-year-old Negin Ikhpolwak leads an ensemble of 35 women that plays both Western and Afghan musical instruments. In a country notorious internationally for harsh restrictions on women in most areas of life, Negin's story highlights a double challenge. (Photo by Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

Carnival revellers pose during the postponed “Rosenmontag” (Rose Monday) parade in Mainz, Germany, May 8, 2016, after the original parade in February was cancelled due to severe weather. (Photo by Ralph Orlowski/Reuters)