A mason bee deposits its collected pollen in an elderberry stick near Hessen, Germany on March 27, 2020. The food supply is sufficient for the eleven-month development of the brood from the egg to the finished bee. Wild bees are active in March and April and die before their offspring hatch. (Photo by Arne Dedert/dpa)

Dancers perform during the closing ceremony of the 19th Asian Games at the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre Stadium on October 8, 2023 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China. (Photo by Tingshu Wang/Reuters)

The opening of sculptor Carole Feuerman solo outdoor public art show, Sea Idylls, on Park Avenue in NYC on April 27, 2023. The hyperrealistic sculptures in conjunction with Les Galeries Bartoux and Patrons of Park Avenue line the median. (Photo by Milo Hess/ZUMA Press Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A devotee participates in Bonalu festival in Hyderabad, India, Thursday, June 22, 2023. Bonalu is a month-long Hindu folk festival of the Telangana region dedicated to Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. (Photo by Mahesh Kumar A./AP Photo)

American singer Dove Cameron arrives for the world premiere of “The Flash” at Ovation Hollywood in Hollywood, California, on June 12, 2023. (Photo by Michael Tran/AFP Photo)

A man holds a tree branch and marches by burning tires during a protest against insecurity, on August 7, 2023, near the Prime Minister's official house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Some 300 women and minors were kidnapped in Haiti by criminal gangs in the first half of this year, UNICEF said Monday, warning of a disturbing rise in abductions that leave “deep physical and psychological scars”. The surge in abductions threatens “both the people of Haiti and those who have come to help”. (Photo by Richard Pierrin/AFP Photo)

A participant flies a kite during the “Letatlin N4” annual Festival of Kites, in Moscow, Russia on June 6, 2021. (Photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/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.