A model wears a creation for the Louis Vuitton Pre-Fall 2023 show in Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, April 29, 2023. (Photo by Lee Jin-man/AP Photo)

South Korea's Amry Special Warfare Command (SWC) soldiers aim their machine guns in a frozen river during a winter exercise in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Thursday, January 8, 2015. About 200 SWC soldiers participated in this routine two-week winter drill. (Photo by Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo)

A South Korean woman looks out at the flood water after a torrential rain storm hit the capital city on July 27, 2011 in Seoul, South Korea. South Korea issued a national crisis warning on as torrential rain caused flooding in parts of the country, killing over 35 with at least ten missing. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

Vehicles clog a highway during a hazy day in Beijing, China, Wednesday, February 26, 2014. Beijing remained cloaked in hazardous white pollution hiding much of its skyline Wednesday, despite the announced closures or production cuts at 147 of the city's industrial plants. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP 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.

Two sailors from HMS Fury enjoy a smoke with two women in bathing suits on a beach in Jersey, where their ship is on a visit. (Photo by William Vanderson/Fox Photos/Getty Images). 29th June 1935

Gulparai, 12, (L) smokes heroin along side her mother Sabera and brother Zaher, 14, (R) August 27, 2007 in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Afghan boys attend their Quran study sessions at the Islami Noor religious school on May 12, 2011 in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Despite recent multiple attacks near the city's downtown, children continue their studies at the school. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)