Sky attends the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall on August 20, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Models appear together on he runway at the conclusion of the 2018 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in New York City, New York, U.S., November 8, 2018. (Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters)

Pope Francis waves as he arrives at the Kangemi slums on the outskirts of Kenya's capital Nairobi, November 27, 2015. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

Syrian refugees sit behind barbed wire as they wait to cross into Macedonia at the Greek-Macedonian border, near the village of Idomeni, August 21, 2015. (Photo by Yannis Behrakis/Reuters)

In this image released by World Press Photo, Thursday April 15, 2021, by Ami Vitale for CNN, titled Rescue of Giraffes from Flooding Island, which won the first prize in the Nature Singles category, shows A Rothschild's giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi) is transported to safety in a custom-built barge from a flooded Longicharo Island, Lake Baringo, in western Kenya, on Dec. 3, 2020. (Photo by Ami Vitale for CNN, World Press Photo via AP Photo)

Nature – first prize, stories. Pandemic Pigeons – A Love Story. The photographer’s daughter, Merel, cowers after Dollie flies past and perches on the balcony before entering the house in Vlaardingen in the Netherlands on 6 April 2020. “She’s still frightened when Dollie suddenly lands on the balcony railing. I hide my smile behind the camera, as I try to comfort her by saying they won’t hurt you. “I thought he was going to attack me”, she replies. As the nesting pigeons keep coming back to our place, slowly my girls have started to appreciate them – perhaps not as much as I do, but it’s a start”. (Photo by Jasper Doest/World Press Photo 2021)

A picture taken on July 14, 2014 from a Boeing C135 refueling tanker shows two French Rafale fighter planes, flying over the French capital during the annual Bastille Day military parade on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. France has issued an unprecedented invitation to all 72 countries involved in World War I to take part in its annual Bastille Day military parade. (Photo by Franck Pennant/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.