Muslim pilgrims pray on top of the rocky hill known as Mountain of Mercy on the Plain of Arafat during the annual hajj pilgrimage near the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Thursday, July 30, 2020. Only about 1,000 pilgrims will be allowed to perform the annual hajj pilgrimage this year due to the virus pandemic. (Photo by Saudi Ministry of Media via AP Photo)

A model looks at her mobile phone backstage before Lenny Niemeyer show during Sao Paulo Fashion Week in Sao Paulo, Brazil, April 23, 2019. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

A model wears a creation for the Dior Haute Couture Fall-Winter 2020 fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, July 1 2019. (Photo by Michel Euler/AP Photo)

The Christian Siriano collection is modeled during Fashion Week, Thursday, February 6, 2020, in New York. (Photo by John Minchillo/AP Photo)

An member of the group “Pause the System” wears a face mask as she protests in front of the entrance to Downing Street in London, Friday, March 20, 2020. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. (Photo by Frank Augstein/AP Photo)

A model stumbles during Jean Paul Gaultier's Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2022-2023 fashion collection presented Wednesday, July 6, 2022 in Paris. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

A man looks at the body of a man killed at a residential building damaged by a Russian military strike, as a journalist looks at the scene in Kharkiv, Ukraine, July 11, 2022. (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.