My photos are gone

I was sick of photos from web pages I visit being stored on my phone, so after researching I installed a .nomedia file. However, since doing this all my photos from my gallery are no longer there: I can see them in media explorer, but there is nothing in the gallery! Can anyone help? Any photos I take on my camera now are happily appearing in the gallery, just all my old ones aren't there. My device is a *HTC One M8*.