People wearing face masks walk through Ginza area on December 27, 2020 in Tokyo, Japan. Japan announced it will close its borders to non-resident foreign nationals from tomorrow until the end of January after two people were discovered to be infected with a new strain of Covid-19 coronavirus that has begun spreading around the world. The country is also grappling with a surge in coronavirus infections, with Tokyo reporting 708 cases today. To date, Japan has recorded 218,453 infections, 3,052 deaths and 3,052 recoveries from the virus. (Photo by Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images)

A picture taken on April 27, 2021, shows the electrical wires running between homes in the capital Baghdad's Murabaa neighbourhood. Between January and March alone, the interior ministry recorded 7,000 fires, the deadliest of which erupted on Sunday in a Covid-19 hospital in Baghdad. Eighty-two people died and 100 others were injured in the inferno, which sparked shock and outrage in the country. Baghdad, a sprawling metropolis of 10 million people, has the tragic distinction of being the Iraqi city hit by the most fires every year. (Photo by Sabah Arar/AFP Photo)

This photo provided by Red Antler Processing shows the alligator sport hunting team made up of, from left, Tanner White, tag-holder Donald Woods, Will Thomas and Joey Clark as they hoist, with the help of a forklift, the longest alligator officially harvested in Mississippi, Saturday, August 26, 2023, at Red Antler Processing in Yazoo City, Miss. The male alligator weighed 802.5 pounds and measured 14 feet, 3 inches long, and its length broke the state record as the longest alligator ever caught, according to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. (Phoot by Shane Smith/Red Antler Processing via AP Photo)

Tourists walk behind a faded sign warning of tsunami hazard in Khao Lak, Phang Nga province December 15, 2014. Ahead of the anniversary of the 2004 tsunami, experts and officials say key weaknesses remain across the region in the system designed to warn people of the next disaster, and get them to safety. Thailand prepares to mark the tenth anniversary of the 2004 tsunami, the deadliest on the record, that killed at least 226,000 people in 13 Asian and African countries. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

Los Angeles native Mike Stilkey has always been attracted to painting and drawing not only on vintage paper, record covers and book pages, but on the books themselves. Using a mix of ink, colored pencil, paint and lacquer, Stilkey depicts a melancholic and at times a whimsical cast of characters inhabiting ambiguous spaces and narratives of fantasy and fairy tales. A lingering sense of loss and longing hints at emotional depth and draws the viewer into their introspective thrall with a mixture of capricious poetry, wit, and mystery. (Photo by Mike Stilkey)

The brutalist war memorials found throughout the former Yugoslavia were weird enough when they were built in the 1960s and 70s. Today, separated by the end of an architectural movement and the disintegration of the country, they seem almost alien. Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers treats them purely as artistic objects in his book, “Spomenik”, named for the Serb-Croat word for monument. Known for photographing geographical oddities, Kempenaers was captivated by the spomenik after seeing them in an art encyclopedia. After hearing that many had been destroyed or abandoned, he set out to record what was left. (Photo by Jan Kempenaers)

The holder of half a dozen world records will walk across the Grand Canyon on a steel cable with nothing but the Little Colorado River 1,500 feet below on June 23. With no tethers or safety nets, the walk will be the highest tightrope attempt ever for the 34-year-old, at a height taller than the Empire State Building. Last year, Wallenda, a seventh-generation member of the “Flying Wallendas” family of acrobats, became the only person to walk a wire over the brink of Niagara Falls. Photo: Nik Wallenda walks across a tightrope 200 feet above U.S. 41 on January 29, 2013 in Sarasota, Florida. (Photo by Tim Boyles)

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.