A photo showing students at the Tian'anmen Square to greet visiting then-French president Georges Pompidou by Bruno Barbey in 1973.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

Barbey once said,"Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world.

"Back in the 1970s and '80s, most pictures of China were taken in black and white. Few great photographers came to China from France. There were not so many documentations of China in color in the '70s."

He donated a selection of these old snapshots to the National Art Museum and some of them are also on show, evoking a strong sense of nostalgia among the home audience.