Yes, lazy-load your images, because lazy-loading is fine and recommended for speed as long as it is implemented so crawlers can still discover the images. It becomes a problem only when it hides images behind interactions Google will not perform. The pivot is whether the lazy-load is crawlable, not whether you lazy-load at all. Done in a crawlable way, you get the speed benefit and the images still get indexed; done in an interaction-gated way, you lose them. The risk lives in the implementation, so the answer is a rule about how, not a blanket fear.
A crawlable, safe setup loads images on demand using methods Google understands without user input. Native browser lazy-loading with the loading attribute set to lazy is the simplest, and properly implemented JavaScript lazy-loading that exposes the real image URL in the markup, with the actual source discoverable in the page, also works. In these cases the image deferring its load to save bandwidth does not hide its address from the crawler, so it can be found, fetched, and indexed normally while the page stays fast. This is the recommended path.
The unsafe setup is when an image only appears, or its real source only resolves, after an action Google will not take, a click, a hover, an infinite scroll the crawler does not continue, or markup that never exposes the true source. Google renders pages but does not behave like an engaged human, so anything gated behind that kind of interaction can simply never be seen. That is the scenario that strands images, and it is the one to avoid, not lazy-loading in general. This behavior is worth confirming against current rendering guidance, since how Google handles deferred loading can evolve.
Audit how your images load. If they use native lazy-loading or expose their real source in the markup, you are safe, keep them. If any only resolve behind a click, a hover, or scroll the crawler will not complete, switch those to a crawlable method. Choose crawlable lazy-loading over interaction-gated loading and you keep both the speed and the indexing.