A woman passes a mural in Manhattan on October 27, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP Photo)

Lara Stone at Mark's Club on October 27, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Mark Milan/GC Images)

Commuters make their way across a street during rainfall in New Delhi on June 27, 2024. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

A model poses with a motorcycle and a car on a racing track at the Essen Motor Show in Essen, Germany, November 27, 2015. (Photo by Ina Fassbender/Reuters)

A participant smiles at the annual Christopher Street Day parade on Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin, Germany, June 27, 2015. (Photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

Coco, a dog dressed as Chucky, participates in a halloween pet show in Callao, Peru, Sunday, October 27, 2024. (Photo by Guadalupe Pardo/AP Photo)

Cosplayers attend Comic-Con International in San Diego, California on July 27, 2024. (Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Reuters)

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.