Sorry, this won't help, but may provide moral support. I have the same situation, as, evidently , have many users. There are responses to the same question going back years. Every answer says in effect "Click the device icon, then the photos tab", ignoring the question which clearly states the photos tab simply isn't there.
I want to move photos from a Windows 10 PC to an iPad4 mini. I expected this to take five minutes. Two days later, I still can't get iTunes to show any photos tab. The photos are NOT in iCloud, whatever that is. They are on a PC hard drive. I need them to be on the iPad. Please can anyone explain how to achieve this?