The Portraits and snapshots subseries consists of images of Mary H.B. Rieffel, her siblings, parents, extended family, friends of the family, and school friends. There are individual portraits of the Bush family members and some group portraits. There are some portraits of her maternal and paternal grandparents. There are many snapshots of the Bush family throughout their childhood, at their family home, on vacations, and playing at the beach.

Three albums were disbound, with loose pages that were cut apart, prior to arriving at Hagley Library. The purpose for such disbinding is unknown. The photographs on the pages were numbered, and therefore, using the numbering, the albums could be reassembled. None of the albums are complete; pages, sections of pages, and photographs from pages are missing. Most of the images have captions with the numbers, and most of the captioning includes dates (at least a year). Instances where the archivist has reassembled the album have been notated in the finding aid on the file level.

There are images showing Rieffel at camp, her days at Fairfax Hall, and at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. There is also a set of family albums concerning her husband, Marc Rieffel, and their three sons. The albums include a trip to France in 1953, accompanied by Mary H.B. Rieffel's travel diary.