Embodiments of the present disclosure disclose a method and apparatus for recognizing a face. A specific embodiment of the method includes: acquiring at least two facial images of a to-be-recognized face under different illuminations using a near-infrared photographing device; generating at least one difference image based on a brightness difference between each two of the at least two facial images; determining a facial contour image of the to-be-recognized, face based on the at least one difference image; inputting the at least two facial images, the at least one difference image, and the facial contour image into a pre-trained real face prediction value calculation model to obtain a real face prediction value of the to-be-recognized face; and outputting prompt information for indicating successful recognition of a real face, in response to determining the obtained real face prediction value being greater than a preset threshold.