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.

In this photograph taken on December 8, 2017, Indian child Samarth Bangari, 2, plays with langur monkeys at his home in Allapur in India' s southwest Karnataka state, 250 miles from Bangalore. He is still too young to talk, but a 2- year- old Indian boy has become a subject of local intrigue after befriending a gang of langur monkeys. (Photo by Manjunath Kiran/AFP Photo)

A child sleeps under a table at the Jorkpan market in Sinkor district in Monrovia, Liberia on May 2, 2016. (Photo by Marco Longari/AFP Photo)

A man looks at a figure outside a store as he walks along a street in Beijing on March 2, 2021. (Photo by Wang Zhao/AFP Photo)

A person dressed in a chicken costume walks through Westminster on Good Friday in London, United Kingdom on April 2, 2021. (Photo by Hannah McKay/Reuters)

A man looks at kebabs cooking on the street side in Rawalpindi, Pakistan October 2, 2017. (Photo by Caren Firouz/Reuters)

Customers ride escalators at a shopping mall in central Moscow, Russia on March 2, 2019. (Photo by Mladen Antonov/AFP Photo)