The face is the primary source of information for recognizing the identity of people around us, but the neural basis of this astonishing ability remains largely unknown. In this presentation, I will define the fundamental problem of face identity recognition, arguing that there is a specific expertise of the human species at this function. I will then attempt to integrate a large corpus of observations from lesion studies, neuroimaging, human intracerebral recordings and stimulation into a coherent framework to shed light on the neural mechanisms of human face identity recognition.