What the heck is up with the Photos app?

Go to customise and reorder, it's at the bottom of the screen and remove all the items that you don't need.

The only items I have on mine are utilities and albums.

There's a lot less clutter this way.

Also if you tap on library it will show you all your pictures. It is a pain.

The recents option shows me all the recent photos. Inside, photos are sectioned off using some intervals of time, like weeks/months. That does the job for me.
But yeah, I think the old one was way better in terms of accessibility. Seems like Apple knows it messed up, and is trying to fix things, given it's acquiring some startup in this regard.

The photos app is neat once you mark up your photos with good descriptions with something like Be My AI.

If you also tag the people and pets in your photos (this can be tricky without a sighted person to help you verify), you can let the photos app index and it will generate sections in the app with just who you tagged in them. I've got buttens in mine that show me pics of me, my sister, and most of my guide dogs. I haven't been able to get the app to generate sections from different trips; I don't have enough yet.

Also once you've identified people in photos, VO will use that info when it reads you the autogenerated photo descriptions if you have that turned on in VO settings. Although, this is far less useful than a description you add via mark up.

kool_turk's tip about removing all the clutter helps a lot. I'm also leaving the item that groups the videos up from the pictures on there. That's been something I've wanted for a long time.

Thanks for the tip on customizing. And Holger Fiallo beat me to mentioning the Library button. Thanks Holger!