First, that's not how it's supposed to be, so don't worry about that.
Sounds like a permission problem to me, and your FTP client is the only problem there. Make sure the images you upload are *world readable* and the directories *world executable*. That permission is 744 (`-rwxr--r--`) for files and 755 (`-rwxr-xr-x`) for directories.
Files need to be readable by the web server user (which has few privileges) and directories need to be [i]listable[/i], which is the execute flag. You can usually give those permissions in the FTP client after you upload, or set defaults somewhere in its preferences.
The most important one is the directory execute permission, which is probably the only problem you're having. Get that straight and everything should work.
I could probably try to fix this if I find the permissions are incorrect... that'd be a good addition I think.