The Hughes photographs date from 1944, 1948-1949, 1953-1955, and 1961-1976 and are arranged in three series: Events, People, and Nonhuman Subjects. Within Events are five subseries: Birthdays, Funerals, Graduations, Weddings, and Wedding Anniversaries. Within People are eight subseries: Children, Families, Groups, Men, Men and Women, Organizations, Performers, and Women. The majority of these have further subsections, which are noted in the series list below. Within Nonhuman Subjects are two subseries: Buildings and Miscellaneous.

Where possible, identification has been given from captions or more recently provided information. Unidentified photographs have been described in-depth on their housing. Typed captions, unattached upon the collection's receipt, have been included in their own folder at the end of the collection. Where only partial identification is available, a question mark has been included within the labeling (e.g. "? Smith"). Where multiple, identified prints of the same size are housed in one folder, subjects of individual prints are noted in the Collection Description below.

Although the majority of the images were grouped during the collection's processing, the Performers subseries were left in their original grouping of the same name. Where a subject appears in photographs across multiple categories, an effort has been made to provide cross reference information; this information is included below as "See also" notes.

Arrangement is chiefly alphabetical by name or, if name is unavailable, by subject; where arrangement is by names, the last name is used where possible. Wedding photographs are arranged alphabetically by the husband's last name unless unavailable, at which point the wife's last name is used. For those wedding photographs with the place identification of "Tabunacular Church", this spelling provided in the Collection Description reflects that written on the images themselves.

Within the Clubs sub-subseries are a number of largely unidentified debutante photographs. While some images appear to belong to the same year, due to a lack of identification they had to be housed alphabetically; however, those images that appear to belong to the same year have been given a group number, which is indicated in the Collection Description below.

Photograph size given is in inches. Unless noted with a "b/w" (to indicate black and white), images are in color. The term "image" has been used to indicate photographs with differing subjects (e.g. 2 images include a photo of subject A and one of subject B). The term "copies" has been used to indicate multiple prints of the same image. Where possible, those photographs taken by Rosie Hughes are indicated in the Collection Description.

Two oversize (11x14") images are housed at RH PH 506(f). Two DVDs are located at RH Video 27.