Models prepare backstage before a presentation as part of Fashion Weekend Plus Size Summer 2015 collection show in Sao Paulo, July 25, 2015. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

A jockey takes part in a traditional cattle race or “Pacu Jawi”, to mark the end of the rice harvest in Tanah Datar, West Sumatra, Indonesia, August 13, 2016 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. (Photo by Hafiz Mubarak A./Reuters/Antara Foto)

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.

A coil-shaped Helix Nebula showing a fine web of filamentary “bicycle-spoke” features embedded in the colorful red and blue ring of gas. At 650 light-years away, the Helix is one of the nearest planetary nebulae to Earth. A planetary nebula is the glowing gas around a dying, Sun-like star. (Photo by Reuters/NASA)

Children try to push an injured and weak dolphin back into the water after it washed ashore during bad weather and high tide on a beach in Cilacap, Central Java, Indonesia August 12, 2016 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. (Photo by Idhad Zakaria/Reuters/Antara Foto)

An Afghan journalist takes a “selfie” as U.S. President Barack Obama (R) holds a joint news conference with Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani (C) at the White House in Washington March 24, 2015. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

President Calvin Coolidge rides in a car during his inaugural parade in Washington, D.C., U.S. in March 1925. (Photo by Reuters/Library of Congress)

Members of the Guard of Honor of the Presidential Regiment from Russia perform during the “Spasskaya Tower” international military music festival at Moscow's Red Square, Russia, September 10, 2015. The festival runs until 13 Sepember. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)