How to retrieve lost photos from my ICloud storage

I am not able to access any photos on my iCloud storage. The folders are all empty yet it shows there are 1.34 GB of photos (1251) and 11 videos in iCloud storage. I have used a total of 3 GB out of the 50 GB that is available. I have gone through all the trouble shooting tutorials to try and access these photos and nothing has changed. The photos are not accessible. How can I change this to be able to see and download those photos?