A man walks at the empty Karon beach on Phuket Island, Thailand on April 1, 2021. Picture taken with a drone. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)

American singer-songwriter Madonna poses for a sеxed up snap with her daughter Lourdes Leon in December 2021. (Photo by madona/Instagram)

A Nihang Sikh, belonging to the Sikh warrior clan, performs Gatka, a form of Sikh martial arts, during a religious procession marking the 350th martyrdom anniversary of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji in New Delhi, India, 25 November 2025. The procession commemorates the martyrdom of the 9th Sikh Guru, Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, who was executed in 1675 AD for refusing to convert to Islam on the orders of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. The event is observed at Gurudwara Sis Ganj in Delhi. Guru Tegh Bahadur, the youngest of the five sons of Guru Hargobind, was born in Amritsar in 1621. (Photo by Rajat Gupta/EPA)

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.

Gisele Marie, a Muslim woman and professional heavy metal musician, holds her Gibson Flying V electric guitar as walks down stairs at the end of a fund raising concert for the Syrian refugees in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro November 8, 2015. Based in Sao Paulo, Marie, 42, is the granddaughter of German Catholics, and converted to Islam several months after her father passed away in 2009. Marie, who wears the burka, has been fronting her brothers' heavy metal band "Spectrus" since 2012. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

A chimpanzee bottle-feeds a lamb at Southam Zoo Farm in Warwickshire. The owners of the zoo, Mr and Mrs Clews, bring up many of the animals as their pets; the animals, are, as a result, of a friendly disposition. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images). 23rd August 1968

Maya Goldstein, 7 marches in the Capital Pride Parade in Washington, D.C. on June 10, 2023. (Photo by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)

One of the poor families collecting firewood from the street and the burn to feel some warmth in Aleppo, Syria on August 19, 2016. (Photo by Basem Ayoubi/Imageslive/ZUMA Press/Splash News)