General view of festival goers at the main stage on Day 3 of Download festival at Donnington Park on June 12, 2022 in Donnington, England. (Photo by Chris Bethell/The Guardian)

A girl dressed as a living goddess “Kumari” poses for a photograph before taking part in the “Kumari Puja” rituals at the Hanuman Dhoka at Durbar Square in Kathmandu on September 27, 2023. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/AFP Photo)

A man walks pat sculptures with face masks on along an alley in Beijing on August 3, 2021. (Photo by Noel Celis/AFP Photo)

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)

Space Shuttle Discovery is towed from the shuttle landing facility to the orbiter processing facility at Kennedy Space Center on April 20, 2010 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Discovery's landing attempts at KSC were scrubbed yesterday due to unacceptable weather conditions. Discovery is returning from a successful mission to the International Space Station. (Photo by Matt Stroshane/Getty Images). CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – APRIL 20 2010

Street fighting in Berlin between Government troops and Spartacists, during the Spartacist uprising which followed Germany's defeat in World War I. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images). 1919

An F/A-18 Hornet assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron One Five One (VFA-151) emerges from a cloud created when it broke the sound barrier in the skies over the Pacific Ocean, July 7, 1999. (Photo by John Gay/US Navy)

Chinese woman Duo Zirong feeds stray cats at her home February 14, 2006 in Shanghai, China. Duo Zirong, a Daur ethnic minority group woman from Inner Mongolia and reported as the “Cat Woman”, has housed about 300 cats with her Shanghainese husband Liu Junluo and mother-in-law. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)