Mel Winnie Harlow poses for photographers before the presentation of Christian Dior's Spring-Summer 2018 ready-to-wear fashion collection in Paris, Tuesday, September 26, 2017. (Photo by Michel Euler/AP Photo)

Russian artist Maria Gazanova (L) works on her "The Alive Painting" art work during the Art Krasnoyarsk annual festival in Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia November 4, 2015. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

A horse- drawn carriage rides along the race course through the Thuringian Forest in Oberhof, Germany, 05 January 2017. Winter found its way to Saxony, Saxony- Anhalt, and Thuringia. In some regions it can get as low as negative 20 degrees overnight. (Photo by Martin Schutt/Zentralbild/DPA)

Two young boys kneel on stools on either side of a round table as one uses a match to this the other's cigarette, November 12, 1928. (Photo by FPG/Getty Images)

A child watching the sea while residents try to clear the bed of a river that has been blocked by debris left by Hurricane Matthew, in the commune of Roche-a-Bateaux, in the south west of Haiti, on October 21, 2016. At least 546 people were killed and more than 175,000 people lost their homes when Hurricane Matthew roared ashore on October 4, packing winds of 145 miles (230 kilometers) per hour. (Photo by Hector Retamal/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.

German model Emma Todt poses as she arrives for the screening of the film “Armageddon Time” during the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 19, 2022. (Photo by Stephane Mahe/Reuters)

Adrienne Sipe (L) and Brooke Gilliam of Washington D.C. leap off a snow podium they made near the U.S. Capitol in Washington February 13, 2014. A deadly and intensifying winter storm packing heavy snow, sleet and rain pelted a huge swath of the U.S. East Coast on Thursday, grounding flights and shuttering schools and government offices. (Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)