A system for identifying individuals in digital images and for providing matching digital images is provided. A set of images that include faces of known individuals is received. Faces are detected in the images and facial components are identified in each face. Visual words corresponding to the facial components are generated, stored, and associated with identifiers of the individuals. At a later time, a user may provide an image that includes the face of one of the known individuals. Visual words are determined from the face of the individual in the provided image and matched against the stored visual words. Images associated with matching visual words are ranked and presented to the user.