Racegoers during Ladies Day of the 2018 Cheltenham Festival in Cheltenham, England on March 14, 2018. (Photo by Graham Stone/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

The Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) is seen over the sky near Inari in Lapland, Finland on February 14, 2019. (Photo by Alexander Kuznetsov/Reuters)

Loreen from Sweden performs after winning the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool, Britain on May 14, 2023. (Photo by Phil Noble/Reuters)

A woman uses a plastic bad to protect her head amid snowfall in Beijing, China on December 14, 2023. (Photo by Tingshu Wang/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.

Bella Thorne out and about, Los Angeles, USA on June 14, 2017. (Photo by Broadimage/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

People in full medieval armor take part in a combat at Central Park in New York, U.S., August 14, 2021. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

Commuters make their way through a flooded street after a heavy rain shower in Lahore on July 14, 2022. (Photo by Arif Ali/AFP Photo)