The Compact Muon Solenoid is one of the two multi-purpose experiments at the Large Hadron Collider and has a broad physics program. Many aspects of such a program depend on the ability to trigger, reconstruct, and identify events containing final state electrons (or positrons) and photons with high efficiency and excellent resolution. In these proceedings, the characteristics and the performance of the trigger and offline electron and photon reconstruction at CMS are presented, with a focus on the first two years of the LHC Run 3 data taking. The techniques used to identify these particles with high purity and to achieve the ultimate precision in energy measurements are also discussed. Finally, an overview is given of some recent developments and improvements that are foreseen to become the standard in the next future.