A “Free Syrian Army” fighter in the Bustan Pasha neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, August 21, 2013. (Photo by James Lawler Duggan)

A Chimpanzee opens its Christmas presents at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo on December 17, 2013 in Bedfordshire, England. (Photo by Tony Margiocchi/Barcroft Media)

Jesse Tyler Ferguson photobombs Miranda Kerr and Orlando Bloom at the 2013 Vanity Fair Oscar party. (Photo by Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic)

A general view of Hong Kong's business district is seen Thursday, August 1, 2013. (Photo by Vincent Yu/AP Photo)

A demonstrator is detained during May Day rallies in Santiago May 1, 2013. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

The Eiffel Tower is illuminated during the traditional Bastille Day fireworks display in Paris, July 14, 2013. (Photo by Fred Dufour/AFP Photo)

Coffins are lined up near the wreckage of the bus, on July 29, 2013. (Photo by Salvatore Laporta/Associated Press)

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.