How to create a custom gallery of photos. Use javascript?

I am trying to create simple website and I've coded the html and css styling. I'm stuck at trying to create a gallery of photos. I don't want a lightbox effect where it overlays the entire page, but rather be embedded so it looks seamless and still has the header navigation. So basically a simple grid of square thumbnails each representing a different project, and when clicked will enlarge and allow the viewer to navigate forward and back through multiple images in each gallery. I'm thinking I need to learn some javascript? Or would it be php? Is there a class on treehouse that would show me how to do this? I want it to be very minimal so many of the jquery plugins I've found (with my very basic knowledge of it) didn't seem fit out of the box. I want it to be similar to this gallery but without the weird resizing that's going on. http://maxlevyarchitect.com/buildings/