All my pictures vanished

I am not sure how tis happened but one day I opened my macbook and all my pictures had vanished including the 'pictures' icon in finder. Luckily I have some back up on an external harddisk and also still some pixs on the camera, but still. Is there anyway to get my old libarary back including the 'pictures' icon in the finder.. I really can't imagine and don't remember deleting the whole thing.

If it is only missing from the sidebar in Finder, go to your User folder, then drag the Pictures folder back to the sidebar.

If it is missing from your User folder, do a Spotlight search and show all, maybe you'll get lucky and somehow only moved the folder to a different location.