Japanese music duo Ami and Aya arrive for the Christian Dior Fall/Winter 2023-2024 ready-to-wear collection presented Tuesday, February 28, 2023 in Paris. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP 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)

A group of youngsters dressed as ghouls and zombies for Halloween parade in downtown Lisbon, Portugal, Friday, October 31, 2014. (Photo by Francisco Seco/AP Photo)

“Diver in Magic Kingdom”. Green Lake (Grüner See) is located Tragöss Austria. In spring snowmelt raises the lake level about 10 meters. This phenomenon, which lasts only a few weeks covering the hiking trails, meadows, trees. The result is magical to watch diving landscapes. Photo location: Grüner See at Tragöss, Austria. (Photo and caption by Marc Henauer/National Geographic Photo Contest)

Umbrellas are placed over the statute of the Beatles, during a photocall, on Liverpool's waterfront, in Liverpool, England, Wednesday, March 22, 2017. The city of Liverpool is getting set to celebrate the half-centenary of “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band”, one of the most influential albums by local heroes The Beatles. (Photo by Peter Byrne/PA Wire via AP Photo)

Body builders preparing at the backstage during the Bodybuilding Cup in Kiev, Ukraine on November 7, 2015 which includes classic bodybuilding, physicist and body fitness and bikini in the competition. (Photo by Nazar Furyk/Pacific Press)

Entomologist Anna Platoni wears a hat made of tropical flowers made by florist Emma Reynolds with a Blue Morpho butterfly on her cheek to mark the opening of Butterflies in the Glasshouse at RHS Garden Wisley, south of London, on Janurary 15, 2016. (Photo by Luke MacGregor/PA Wire/RHS)

A woman aims a World War II machine gun at a military show during celebration of the Defenders of the Fatherland Day in St.Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, February 23, 2016. The day, celebrated in Russia on February 23, honors the nation's military and is a nationwide holiday. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)