Photos on Mac won't open after update.

I recently dug out my old MacBook Air mid 2012 model. I stopped using it a while ago but still had a number of photos saved to the device. The device was still operating Mountain Lion so these photos were saved to iPhoto. I was not able to sync directly to iCloud anymore as it would not verify while on that version of MacOS.

I have now updated the Mac to Catalina which has everything except for the photos working well.

When I try to open the photo app it gives an error code of 4302, then it gives me the option to try open another album library. No matter which option I use I then get an error saying PHPhotosErrorInvalidState. The app then crashes.

Because the app isn't loading anything at all, I haven't found a way to try the repair photo method I've seen suggested on other posts.

Do I need to try and delete all the photos saved and start again?

thanks