Photos disappeared?

Im new to using macs, my icloud storage was filled by my 1400 photos, I imported those photos to my Mac and put them in an album called backup or something. I deleted the photos off iCloud over 30 days ago. Earlier today I imported some photos to my mac via airdrop. Now I'm checking, those photos I just imported are the only photos I have. All my photos are gone and I don't know what the **** to do. All my albums are gone. When I check my storage, I still have 8gb of photos stored on this laptop so they are not deleted. I don't know how to access them.