People hold umbrellas as they walk past a flooded street in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China, July 19, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

China's President Xi Jinping's wife Peng Liyuan, right, and French President Emmanuel Macron's wife Brigitte Macron pose in front of the clock as they visit the Orsay Museum, Monday, May 6, 2024 in Paris. (Photo by Aurelien Morissard/AP Photo)

A woman walks past graffiti on a wall in the Williamsburg neighborhood of the borough of Brooklyn, in New York, September 16, 2014. The picture was taken through car window with raindrops. (Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

A male puma, named Bordo arrives for an examination and tests at a veterinary in Brasilia, Brazil, 31 October 2017 (issued 01 November 2017). Bordo, a young male puma, captured when he was a cub, will become the first animal of his species to be released in a sanctuary in the Brazilian savannah in Goias State close to Brasilia. The sanctuary, a preserve for wild cats, is in the first phase and is located on private lands but state funded. (Photo by Joedson Alves/EPA/EFE)

People look at buildings displaying a light show on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing on June 30, 2021. (Photo by Noel Celis/AFP Photo)

Revellers brave the rain as they make the most of New Year's Eve in Liverpool city centre, UK on December 31, 2024. (Photo by Ioannis Alexopoulos/London News Pictures)

Travel photographer Amos Chapple recently crossed into Turkmenistan on a three-day transit visa and was able to photograph many of the sights and monuments in Ashgabat, the capital and largest city. Turkmenistan is a single-party country, a former Soviet state, run by a president at the center of a cult of personality.

Photo: A young couple leave the Alem Entertainment Center in Ashgabat. The current president has a history of breaking obscure records. In 2012 the wheel atop this complex was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest enclosed Ferris wheel. The structure was built at a cost of $90m. (Photo by Amos Chapple via The Atlantic)

Floralis Genérica is a sculpture made of steel and aluminum located in Plaza de las Naciones Unidas, Avenida Figueroa Alcorta, Buenos Aires, a gift to the city by the Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano. Catalano once said that the flower "is a synthesis of all the flowers and is both a hope that is reborn every day to open." It was created in 2002. The sculpture moves closing its petals in the evening and opening them in the morning, although this mechanism is currently disabled. The sculpture is located in the center of a park of four acres of wooded boundaries, surrounded by paths that get closer and provide different perspectives of the monument, and placed above a reflecting pool, which apart from fulfilling its aesthetic function, protects it. It represents a large flower made of stainless steel with aluminum skeleton and reinforced concrete, which looks at the sky, extending to it its six petals. Weighs eighteen tons and is 23 meters high.