I just wanted to mention a program which (I think) does something similar, for people who might be interested in what KM described but don't want to write the program: ids. I haven't actually used the program (only seen the results on a friend's site), so this might not be the right tool for this sort of task.

Here's a brief blurb on the project:
IDS (Image Display System) is a CGI written in Perl that generates a photo album website on the fly. All you need to provide are the images and (optionally) text descriptions. As you add new pictures, they will appear automatically. Each image will be displayed with information such as image type, file size, image size, and date uploaded. If EXIF information is embedded in the image (shutter speed, aperature, focal length, etc.), it will be displayed.

It will create thumbnail preview images for JPEG, PNG, and GIF images. It will also recognize and display QuickTime movies, MPEG movies, and MP3 files.

IDS will break up large albums into multiple pages.

IDS uses HTML templates, so you can easily customize the look of your site.