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)

The Doppler on Wheels (DOW) vehicle scans a supercell thunderstorm during a tornado research mission, May 8, 2017 in Elbert County near Agate, Colorado. Doppler on Wheels (DOW) is a mobile doppler radar mounted on a truck that brings instruments directly into storms, allowing scientists to scan storms and tornadoes and make 3-D maps of wind and debris. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Labourers load a three-wheeled vehicle onto the back of a van at the Mercato market in Addis Ababa October 9, 2015. Addis Ababa's “Mercato” – Italian for “market” – is reputedly the biggest open-air market in Africa, lying in the west of the capital. (Photo by Tiksa Negeri/Reuters)

Fireworks explode around the London Eye wheel, the Big Ben clock tower and the Houses of Parliament to mark the beginning of the New Year in London, Britain, January 1, 2016. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

Participants take part in a high-wheel bicycle race in the Frederick county, in Maryland, United States on July 15, 2023. (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

This 1999 photo, supplied by HBO, shows a younger-looking James Gandolfini, who plays mob boss Tony Soprano, in an episode from the first season of the HBO cable television mob series, “The Sopranos”. Actor James Gandolfini, best known for his Emmy-winning portrayal of a conflicted New Jersey mob boss in the acclaimed HBO cable television series “The Sopranos”, has died while vacationing in Rome, the network said on June 19, 2013. (Photo by Anthony Neste/AP Photo/HBO)

A swimmer competes in Le Defi Monte-Cristo (Monte Cristo Challenge) swimming event at the Chateau d'If, off the coast of Marseille, southern France, on June 21, 2019. Created in 1999 and inspired by Alexandre Dumas' character of Edmond Dantes, the Monte Cristo Challenge will take place from June 21 to 23, 2019. (Photo by Boris Horvat/AFP Photo)

Masakatsu Sashie is a Japanese painter, born in 1974 in Kanazawa. His paintings of spherical structures floating above rubble on the streets, envision a future where environmental disasters have made the cities depicted uninhabitable. While he has been painting since 1999, his work caught more national intention in 2005 at the Geisai art show.