My iphone 5c deleted all my 4k+ pictures for no reason?

They're all gone, over 3 years worth of pictures and videos just DELETED themselves out of NOWHERE, they aren't in the recently deleted folder, there's NO recently deleted folder anymore it literally just WIPED MY PICTURES. I didn't back them up on iCloud because i could never figure out how that works, my phone did this exact same thing with my contacts just earlier today, where they all got wiped for absolutely no reason. I don't know what to do can someone please help me, i had really important memories saved in my photos, please tell me there's a way to get them back

Usually there's no way to get them back, however if contact apple, they might be able to get them back, but otherwise they are gone.

It's time for you to hire a jewish lawyer

Ok

I'm a developer for Decipher Tools (a software company that does iPhone data recovery) and I see a lot of weird iPhone behavior. It's important for us to see if the photo files themselves got deleted, or if it's just the database of the Photos app organization (albums, etc) that broke.

I would run our Decipher Backup Browser tool (linked from the blog post I put as a reference/source) and see if there are any photos in the camera roll or "all photos" view.

Also, if go into the Settings app > General > Storage & iCloud Usage and tap "Manage Storage" under "Storage" (not iCloud), how much space does it say is being used for Photos & Camera? That is another clue for us of whether the files are still there and it's just the organization that broke.

If you want to contact us directly, there's a Contact link at the top of the blog post I linked.