Protesters march against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., June 1, 2020. (Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters)

A pheasant is seen among grasses in Bursa, Turkiye on October 07, 2024. Pheasants mostly live in forested areas, thickets and wetlands. Unlike females, male pheasants have a much more remarkable structure with their long tails and feathers in bright and variable colors. Also, they feed on fruits, grains, seeds and invertebrates. (Photo by Alper Tuydes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

A Lebanese man carries an injured woman away from the site of a car bomb explosion in a Shiite area and stronghold of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah at the southern suburb of Beirut, Thursday January 2, 2014. A large explosion has rocked a stronghold of the Shiite Hezbollah group in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital. (Photo by Hussein Malla/AP Photo)

Sport category, winner: Yuan Peng. Liu Bingqing and Liu Yujie are twin sisters who have studied and trained in gymnastics since their early childhood in Jining, China. (Photo by Yuan Peng/Sony World Photography Awards)

Doris Dean of Chicago, Ill., sits with her gun shortly after she won a 50 meter, 40-shot event for women with a perfect 400 score at the National Rifle Association (NRA) matches at Camp Perry, near Toledo, Ohio, September 7, 1941. (Photo by AP Photo/DW)

Waves breaking at Killiney Beach, Co Dublin, Ireland on Sunday, October 20, 2024. (Photo by Stephen Collins/Collins Photos)

This handout photo taken and released on August 1, 2025 by Indonesia's Geological Agency shows Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki spewing lava and volcanic ash up to approximately 10 kilometres high during its eruption as observed from the monitoring post in East Flores, in East Nusa Tenggara province. A volcano in eastern Indonesia erupted on August 1, belching an ash tower 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) into the sky, the country's volcanology agency said, weeks after another huge eruption triggered dozens of flight cancellations to and from Bali. (Photo by Indonesia's Geological Agency/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.