General atmosphere on Shipyard Island, the venue of the 24th Sziget (Island) Festival in Northern Budapest, Hungary, 14 August 2016. (Photo by Mohai Balázs/Rockstar Photographers)

China perform during the mixed team free preliminaries on day seven of the Doha 2024 World Aquatics Championships at Aspire Dome on February 8, 2024 in Doha, Qatar. (Photo by Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)

A dog attends the Pet Gala fashion show at AKC Museum of The Dog, Monday, May 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP Photo)

Kazakhstan's Nadezhda Dubovitskaya reacts as she competes in the women's high jump qualification of the athletics event at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at Stade de France in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, on August 2, 2024. (Photo by Andrej Isakovic/AFP Photo)

American social media personality, golf instructor and former professional golfer Paige Spiranac attends MAXIM Hot 100 Experience at Hyde Beach at SLS South Beach on July 16, 2022 in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo by @_paige.renee/Instagram)

Satarupa Chakraborty, 5, dressed as a Kumari, yawns while she is worshipped by a Hindu priest during the religious festival of Durga Puja in Agartala October 2, 2014. (Photo by Jayanta Dey/Reuters)

Trick rider Kendel Sampson performs during the trick riding session of the RAM Rodeo in Warkworth, Ontario, on August 1, 2013. The teenage Encore Presentation Trick Riders perform daring stunts every rodeo season in towns throughout Canada. (Photo by Norm Betts/Barcroft Media)

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.