I press alt + f2 and then type in spacefm.
I insert the picture cd into drive and sro 31M PHOTOS shows up in cdrom1

Nothing I have done gets the pictures shown to me so I have to seek help here.
God this is so frustrating!! Can anyone help me with this, please? Thanks!

this is a rather manual way of doing this, but it should work the best / help diagnos a problem.
If you open a root terminal, type mkdir /mnt/disk press enter, type mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/disk then it should be mounted and you can view it by typing spacefm /mnt/disk. if that does not work there is an issue that we will need to find somewhere with hardware./ software communication

So I open the terminal and this is what happened:

cousinlucky@antiX1:~
$ sux
Password:
bash: cannot set terminal process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device
bash: no job control in this shell
root@antiX1:/home/cousinlucky
#

Just continue with Dave's suggestions and ignore the bash message.

OK!

cousinlucky@antiX1:~
$ sux
Password:
bash: cannot set terminal process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device
bash: no job control in this shell
root@antiX1:/home/cousinlucky
# mkdir/mnt/disk
bash: mkdir/mnt/disk: No such file or directory
root@antiX1:/home/cousinlucky
# mount/dev/sr0 /mntdisk
bash: mount/dev/sr0: No such file or directory
root@antiX1:/home/cousinlucky
# mount/dev/sr0 /mnt/disk
bash: mount/dev/sr0: No such file or directory
root@antiX1:/home/cousinlucky
# mount/dev/sr0/mnt/disk
bash: mount/dev/sr0/mnt/disk: No such file or directory
root@antiX1:/home/cousinlucky

cousinlucky wrote:# mkdir/mnt/disk
bash: mkdir/mnt/disk: No such file or directory
...

Your commands are incorrectly formed. Have a look again at what Dave posted. His commands include spaces that are not present in yours.

Ah yes, it worked!

cousinlucky@antiX1:~
$ sux
Password:
bash: cannot set terminal process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device
bash: no job control in this shell
root@antiX1:/home/cousinlucky
# mkdir /mnt/disk
root@antiX1:/home/cousinlucky
# mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/disk
mount: block device /dev/sr0 is write-protected, mounting read-only
root@antiX1:/home/cousinlucky
# spacefm /mnt/disk

Thank You Gentlemen!!