It may seem wierd to you, but it is patterned after Google's page links which also do not show the first page once you truncate the list.
http://www.google.com/search?q=china&hl=en&newwindow=1&rlz=1T4ADBR_enUS220US220&start=180&sa=N
While it's not common for you to randomly access a set of search results from Google (you generally go sequentially and not usually backwards or to any specific page), in an image gallery it is very common to want to go to the first page or the logical "beginning" of the set.
So, while it makes sense for google not to include the first page link, it does not make sense for us :-) I have also been annoyed with this in the past so I'll fix it when I get a chance.