Trees in a park are illuminated with a red light as a part of an art project in Timmendorfer Strand, northern Germany Wednesday, October 26, 2016. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

Youths play football in a flooded field following rain in Jantho, Aceh province on November 24, 2025. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP Photo)

US model Kendall Jenner poses as she arrives on May 11, 2018 for the Secret Chopard Party on the sidelines of the 71 st Cannes film festival in Cannes, southeastern France. (Photo by James Gourley/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Behaviour: Mammals category. Giant Gathering by Tony Wu, USA. Dozens of sperm whales mingled noisily off Sri Lanka’s northeast coast, stacked as far down as Tony could see. This was a congregation of dozens of social units, like a gathering of the clans. Aggregations like this could be a critical part of the whales’ rich social lives but are rarely reported. Some two thirds of the population was wiped out before commercial whaling was banned in 1986. This kind of major gathering could be “a sign that populations are recovering”, says Tony. (Photo by Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017)

A woman poses for pictures with skulls made of cardboard placed on an altar next to the San Francisco church in Mexico City during the celebration of All Souls Day on November 2, 2015. (Photo by Yuri Cortez/AFP Photo)

A brown bear cub by the Khailyulya River in north-east Kamchatka, Russia on July 24, 2021. (Photo by Yuri Smityuk/TASS)

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.

Hindu priests wash the head of a buffalo calf which was sacrificed as part of a ritual at a temple during the Durga Puja festival in Agartala, India, October 10, 2016. (Photo by Jayanta Dey/Reuters)