While I love zenphotos ability to not only do several albums, but several subalbums as well, I need the ability to show the contents of a single album on the index page.

I've used ugly hacks to do this so far:
http://noscope.com/shop/

(I don't even remember the hack, recent photos or something like that)

But I miss the ability to sort, paginate and so on.

Any way this can be done? Hide all subalbums but one, and then show the contents of that up front?

Did you try this?: http://www.zenphoto.org/support/topic.php?id=3380&replies=9

how about trying a search of the forum for 'single album'? You might find a link like this http://www.zenphoto.org/support/topic.php?id=3380&replies=9#post-20567

Most embarrassing. Thanks for the update.