How to implement such a gallery?

Question

Layout

Hello, the task was to make up a similar block:

Only the absolute positioning of elements comes to my mind, but in my opinion it is somehow clumsy.
In fact, my main task is to competently make and arrange circles, and I can stick pictures in them (this is a gallery).
Can anyone advise what? I'm not good at layout, that's why such a block just put me on the shoulder blades (

Answer 1

In case anyone is interested, I made it up using svg.
The whole picture consists of circle elements.
Some circles are simply filled in, for the circles with a picture, patterns are created, which are the background for the circles with pictures. If there are more than 7 pictures in the gallery, the second svg is generated. If there are not enough slides for the second svg, the pictures are duplicated. Something like this)

Answer 2

Absolute positioning unambiguously

Answer 3

SVG