A woman struggles with an umbrella in the wind and rain while walking in Derby city centre, on December 23, 2013. (Photo by Rui Vieira/PA Wire)

Gorillas at Royal Burgers’ Zoo, Arnhem, Netherlands, on November 28, 2013. (Photo by Vidi Photo/Startraks Photo New York)

A picturesque supercell formation in the northwest of Booker, Texas from June 2013. (Photo by Mike Olbinski/Barcroft Media)

Contestant of the Muslimah World 2013, Obabiyi Aishah Ajibola (C) of Nigeria, is reflected in a mirror checking her make-up while contestants wait for a grand final during the Muslimah World competition in Jakarta on September 18, 2013. (Photo by Adek Berry/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.

Dancers from Kyiv and Dnipro preparing themselves in the wings for a performance at the Kyiv National Opera House on June 24, 2022. (Photo by Julian Simmonds/The Guardian)

A Palestinian woman is assisted at the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on October 30, 2023. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)