“Photographic” or eidetic memory is almost certainly not real. Every time someone who claims to have is studied, the evidence collapses. Lots of people think they have it because it’s easy to trick yourself into thinking you are remembering things perfectly. Disproving it requires finding external sources for all the things you think you remember, and nobody does that with their own memories.
The evidence on it is poor, and the more it is studied, the worse the evidence gets, which is exactly what one expects for a phenomenon that isn’t real.
The autobiographical style where people remember every time and date in their life is quite real, but extremely rare. There are only a couple of externally verified and confirmed cases of this in the world. By all accounts it’s pretty crippling. The ability to forget and move past trauma is crucial to our mental health. Having a bad memory is an evolutionary advantage, which is probably why we all have pretty crappy memories.
