Khloe Kardashian and Kris Jenner exit a studio in LA with Lisa Rinna, Kyle Richards, and a film crew. (Photo by Backgrid USA)

People take photos as an Ariane 5 space rocket with a payload of four Galileo satellites lifts off from ESA's European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on November 17, 2016. Ariane 5 successfully launched on November 17 four satellites which will be part of the Galileo global satellite navigation system. (Photo by Jody Amiet/AFP Photo)

American reality television personality, model and social media personality Kylie Jenner seen on June 16, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Splash News and Pictures)

Lisa from Blackpink performs during the 2024 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in New York City, U.S., October 15, 2024. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

British artist Nnena Kalu's presentation during a press preview for the 2025 Turner Prize at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford, Britain, 23 September 2025. The Turner Prize is awarded to a British artist for an outstanding exhibition or presentation during the previous year. The shortlisted artists are Nnena Kalu, Rene Matic, Mohammed Sami, and Zadie Xa. The 2025 Turner Prize is held at Cartwright Hall in recognition of Bradford's status as UK City of Culture 2025. (Photo by Adam Vaughan/EPA)

View of an egg fried on the pavement in Pozo Hondo, Santiago del Estero, Argentina on January 23, 2016, while the real feel was 57 degrees Celsius. Pozo Hondo's Mayor Claudio Nicolau fried an egg on the pavement of the main square of the city Saturday. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

Akram Abu al-Foz places a painted empty shell on top of a Christmas tree he decorated from empty shells he collected in the rebel held besieged city of Douma, in the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Syria December 23, 2016. (Photo by Bassam Khabieh/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.