Interest regions are detected in respective images (18) having face regions labeled with respective facial part labels. For each of the detected interest regions, a respective facial region descriptor vector of facial region descriptor values characterizing the detected interest region is determined. Ones of the facial part labels are assigned to respective ones of the facial region descriptor vectors. For each of the facial part labels, a respective facial part detector (20) that detects facial region descriptor vectors corresponding to the facial part label is built. The facial part detectors (20) are associated with rules (30) that qualify segmentation results of the facial part detectors (20) based on spatial relations between interest regions detected in images and the respective face part labels assigned to the facial part detectors (20). Faces in images are detected and recognized based on application of the facial part detectors (20) to images.