In this Wednesday, May 13, 2015 photo, a Nepalese laborer carries a load of bricks at a brick factory in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Almost 745,600 buildings and homes have been damaged or destroyed, including at least 87,700 in the capital, according to Nepal's emergency authority. Engineers say only 40 percent of Kathmandu's damaged buildings as habitable. (Photo by Bernat Amangue/AP Photo)

A girl uses a mattress as a raft during the flood after the Xepian-Xe Nam Noy hydropower dam collapsed in Attapeu province, Laos July 26, 2018. At least 26 people were killed and over 3,000 people stranded after a hydroelectric dam built collapsed in southeastern Laos, destroying thousands of homes and leaving an unknown number of dead. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

Family members watch on as a bride and groom leave their house to be married in West Mosul on November 3, 2017 in Mosul, Iraq. Five months after Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city was liberated from ISIL in a nine-month long battle, residents have returned to the destroyed city to rebuild their lives. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

People release floating lanterns during the festival of Yee Peng in the northern capital of Chiang Mai, Thailand November 14, 2016. Yi Peng refers to the full moon day in the second month according to the Lanna lunar calendar (the twelfth month according to the Thai lunar calendar). Swarms of Lanna-style sky lanterns are launched into the air where they resemble large shoals of giant fluorescent jellyfish gracefully floating through the sky. The festival is meant as a time for tham bun, to make merit. Khom loi are made from a thin fabric, such as rice paper, stretched over a bamboo or wire frame, to which a candle or fuel cell is attached. When the fuel cell is lit, the resulting hot air is trapped inside the lantern and creates enough lift for the khom loi to float up into the sky. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

Axel, a research prototype rover for exploring the Moon, Mars and other planets, is remotely driven over rocks as engineers from Jet Propulsion (JPL) and grad students from Caltech (California Institute of Technology) demonstrate its mobile over the steep and rocky grounds of the JPL Mars Yard on January 14, 2009 in Pasadena, California. The rover is capable of descending cliffs or into craters and returning by a cable tethered to its starting point. Development of the Axel rover is a point effort funded by NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) and lead by Principal Investigator Issa Newnas and Co-Investigator and Caltech professor of mechanical engineering bio engineering Joel Burdick. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

This is the mesmerising image of a colourful Milky Way shining down on Mount Fuji. Steve Lance Lee, 37, captured the sky above the iconic mountain whilst on his honey moon in Lake Kawaguchiko, Japan. Mount Fuji is illuminated underneath the galaxy of stars, creating an impressive landscape. Here: The beautiful image captured by Steve Lance Lee of the Milky Way seemingly errupting from Mt. Fuji in Japan. (Photo by Steve Lance Lee/Caters News)

There are many ways to interpret the creations of Yoshitoshi Kanemaki, whose works usually involve sculptures of people where two or more characters have merged into a single being. Possibly, Yoshitoshi Kanemaki is trying to express through his sculptures that everyone’s soul is multifaceted. Good emotions are mixed with the bad, love is mixed with hate, contempt with admiration. How often do you hear that a person loves someone deeply, while doing completely horrendous things, unable to see that he or she is destroying their object of love? Nevertheless, we should be thankful to the nature for all the different emotions that we are able to feel. Unlike animals, who only show simple forms of emotions, such as anger, happiness, and a few others, human soul is much deeper, allowing us to feel a full plethora of emotions. (Photo by Yoshitoshi Kanemaki)

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.