Horse riders perform with guns during the El-Jadida International Horse Show in El-Jadida, south of Casablanca, Morocco, October 15, 2016. (Photo by Youssef Boudlal/Reuters)

Handout grab taken from YouTube of Commander Chris Hadfield who has said goodbye to life on the International Space Station by making a cover version of David Bowie's Space Oddity. Issue date: Monday May 13, 2013. (Photo by Commander Chris Hadfield/YouTube/PA Wire)

A person looks at Australian artist Ron Muecks large-scale installation “Mass” which comprises more than 100 hand-cast skulls that collectively weigh approximately 5000 kilograms at an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne on May 18, 2022. (Photo by William West/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.

Aspiring models wait for their turn to be judged during auditions for the upcoming Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai, India, June 30, 2016. (Photo by Shailesh Andrade/Reuters)

A cadet lies on the grass after collapsing during a promotion ceremony at a police school in Bogota December 7, 2012. (Photo by John Vizcaino/Reuters)

Paramasivan points to the statue of sun god Surya at a temple outside the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory, India, February 5, 2017. In the early morning darkness, Devendran P. walks up a hill to a solar observatory in India's southern hill town of Kodaikanal, trudging the same path his father and grandfather walked in a century-old family tradition of studying the sun. (Photo by Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

Iceland foals stand together at a stud farm in Wehrheim near Frankfurt, Germany, Friday, July 15, 2022. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)