[O] Centering side-by-side images in latex/pdf export

[knubee]

I recently opened some .org files from a year ago and tried to generate new
PDFs from them. There have been significant updates to emacs, org-mode, and
the relevant LaTeX packages I use, so some parts of the source had to be
changed. Mostly, everything is working now except for generating PDFs with
centered, side by side images.

Here is what used to work:

    #+BEGIN_center
    #+ATTR_LaTeX: :height 0.2\textwidth
    [[image1.png]]
    #+ATTR_LaTeX: :height 0.2\textwidth
    [[image2.png]]
    #+END_center

I am currently using emacs 26.0.50, orgmode 9.0.3, with TeX Live 2016 on
Debian and the example above results in images that are stacked on top of
each other. When I examine the TeX source, this is the result:

    \begin{center}
    \begin{center}
    \includegraphics[height=0.2\textwidth]{image1.png}
    \end{center}
    \begin{center}
    \includegraphics[height=0.2\textwidth]{image2.png}
    \end{center}
    \end{center}

I assume this is related to recent change in org-mode where images are
centered by default. However, the following change to the org source does
not solve the problem.

    #+ATTR_LaTeX: :height 0.2\textwidth
    [[image1.png]]
    #+ATTR_LaTeX: :height 0.2\textwidth
    [[image2.png]]

The images are still stacked on top of each other (although the outer
"\center" calls are no longer present in resulting tex source):

    \begin{center}
    \includegraphics[height=0.2\textwidth]{image1.png}
    \end{center}
    \begin{center}
    \includegraphics[height=0.2\textwidth]{image2.png}
    \end{center}

I am able to get the images side by side if I disable org-mode's automatic
centering:

    #+ATTR_LaTeX: :height 0.2\textwidth :center
    [[image1.png]]
    #+ATTR_LaTeX: :height 0.2\textwidth :center
    [[image2.png]]

But how can I get side by side images centered? Perhaps the answer is very
 simple and obvious, but I have tried many other changes and been unable to
accomplish this.

thanks in advance.