A man dressed as “El Chapulin Colorado”, a character by screenwriter Roberto Gomez Bolanos, performs for fans and media as they wait for the arrival of the funeral van carrying the body of Bolanos, at Mexican media company Televisa in Mexico City November 29, 2014. Mexican actor and screenwriter Roberto Gomez Bolanos, one of Latin America's most beloved comedians, whose slapstick acts charmed fans from Spain to Argentina for over four decades, died on Friday at the age 85. Known as “Chespirito”, a word play on “Little Shakespeare” for his diminutive stature and his prolific scripts, Gomez Bolanos created some of the region's most enduring comic characters. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)

British born leading lady Elizabeth Taylor feeds the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, London. (Photo by Chris Ware/Keystone/Getty Images). November 1948

Women playing in the street as the snow falls on Johannesburg for the first time in seventeen years. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images). 1st September 1962

“On Friday, after something of a show trial, three young women in a Russian punk band were found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison for an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral earlier this year”. – Daniel Schwartz via CBC News

Photo: A woman wears on her chest the text “free p*ssy riot” as a demonstration by supporters of the jailed feminist punk band p*ssy Riot takes place outside the Russian Embassy on August 17, 2012 in London, England. The three women who staged an anti-Kremlin protest in a church in February, were found guilty today of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, and could face a three-year jail sentence. Supporters are gathering in several cities around the world today as a mark of solidarity. (Photo by Dan Kitwood)

A devotee participates in Holi celebrations at the Nandagram temple, on March 22, 2013. (Photo by Manish Swarup/Associated Press)

The zombies, cowgirls, and witches were out in force Saturday night on Clematis Street as thousands of people came to Moonfest to celebrate Halloween. They came from Broward County, Boynton Beach, Wellington, Port St. Lucie, and as far away as Germany and Sweden. Photo: Joe Smith, 60, Boca Raton. (Photo by Thomas Cordy/The Palm Beach Post)

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.

A visitor feeds a food pellet to a giraffe in the Giraffe Centre in Nairobi, Kenya January 15, 2017. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)