The story of the photographic memory is one of our most well-worn cultural tropes. Movies like Rain Man, as well as the story of autistic savant Stephen Wiltshire, who is sometimes called the “Human Camera” and is currently drawing a panorama of New York City from memory, reinforce our notion that it’s possible to have a memory so keen and perceptive that a quick glance at something is all that’s necessary to burn an image into our consciousness forever.
Scores of famous (and not-so-famous) people have claimed to possess this fantastical ability, from Chinese president Hu Jintao and actor Desi Arnaz to celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe. While their feats of memory magic may leave us all amazed, there’s one tiny problem: photographic memory doesn’t actually exist. At least, not in the way in which we usually think of it.
Camera in Absentia
Most people imagine that a photographic memory works something like this: a person sees a picture or a scene and takes a visual “snapshot,” which lasts forever and can be recalled at any time with complete precision. In reality, though, the closest thing to this scenario is an ability called eidetic memory. Although its existence is controversial, too, people with eidetic memory have extraordinary recall of pictures and images. After looking at something for just a few moments, they can recall the image so vividly that it’s almost as if it were real and right in front of them. The overwhelming majority of individuals with eidetic memory are children, along with adults with organic forms of mental retardation, such as autism. Children with the ability seem to always lose it as they get older; tests have never found an average adult who possesses an eidetic memory. But even people who do seem to have eidetic memory have far-from-perfect recall. In describing their eidetic images, they are often unsure or sketchy about some details, they alter elements of the image, and they fabricate features that did not originally exist. Also, contrary to the myth of photographic memory, eidetic images don’t last forever. They fade after a few minutes, and once they’re gone, they usually cannot be recalled.
