[Colinsky]

You mean a universe without photons? Well, since we’re making this up as we go here, I think that a photonless universe would still have mass. The question is does a baryonic universe require photons, and I think it might be OK, but Genesis suggests otherwise (no light, no anything).
Certainly you could not observe much in a universe without photons.

In the beginning there was nothing.
And God said, "Let there be light."
And there still was nothing, but now you could see it.

[DBrow]

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Looks like baryonic matter first (hadrons and leptons), then photons. So if you took photons away now, you’d still have a place to observe from and eyeballs to observe with, but you’d be unable to see anything. I was mistaken in my earlier post, I did not look up The First Book of Moses to check. You can have “stuff” with no light, the universe has been there before.