I lost all of my photos from my MacBook Air

The usual method to restore deleted files is to restore them from a Time Machine backup: Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support.

Before you give up though, navigate to your Photos Library and open it. Its default location is ~/Pictures. To open that folder, type ~/Pictures into the Finder's Go menu > Go To Folder... field.

Make it look like this

... and click the Go button. Double-click the file named Photos Library.

This assumes you are using the Photos app to store and organize your photos.

😅

Now that you had "a close call" be sure to start using Time Machine, if you haven't already: Back up your files with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support.