jQuery Visage provides a stable (no partially displayed elements), robust (it closes when you click close), styleable (CSS), customizable (you can reprogram many aspects of its behavior) and clean (being an jQuery plugin) way to display a series of images in a lightbox-like way.
See example with default and alternative settings.
Plugin is very customizable through provided configuration options and API hooks. See $.fn.visage.defaults in jquery.visage.js file to see what is available. You can customize plugin per-instance or globally.