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)

Charles Manson plays up to the camera during a 1988 interview with reporter Geraldo Rivera at San Quentin prison in 1988. Authorities say Manson, cult leader and mastermind behind 1969 deaths of actress Sharon Tate and several others, died on Sunday, November 19, 2017. He was 83. (Photo by AP Photo)

“Life in War” (FotoEvidence Press) by Iranian photographer Majid Saeedi is probably the only book about Afghanistan that doesn’t show images of war. For ten years his camera photographed daily life in the context of war. His photographs reveal the humanity of a people living through decades of war. Here: Afghan men escape increasing summer temperatures by wading in the Qarga reservoir on July 9, 2010 in a suburb of Kabul, Afghanistan. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

Lava gushes from the southern side crater of Mt. Etna, Europe's largest active volcano, near Catania, southern Italy Sicily, early Tuesday, May 25, 2021. (Photo by Salvatore Allegra/AP Photo)

A cyclist shops for a gift from a roadside open-air vendor during Valentine's Day celebrations amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Kamwokya, Kampala, Uganda on February 14, 2022. (Photo by Miriam Watsemba/Reuters)

Richard Winsor, Ashley Shaw, Zizi Strallen, Glenn Graham, Nicole Kabera, Harrison Dowzell, Will Bozier and Cordelia Braithwaite during a photo call for Sir Matthew Bourne's The Car Man at the Royal Albert Hall, London on May 11, 2022, a reinterpretation of Bizet's Carmen, staged in 1960s American diner-garages with a specially expanded 65-dancer production for the hall, as part of its 150th anniversary. (Photo by Ian West/PA Images via Getty Images)

People celebrate outside the Supreme Court, Friday, June 24, 2022, in Washington. The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years, a decision by its conservative majority to overturn the court's landmark abortion cases. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo)

Pasua Turner jumps double dutch as people take part in a Juneteenth event along Black Lives Matter Plaza on Monday June 19, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post)