In this paper, we present a method that can recognize face images by use of a sparse population code that is a learning model about a receptive fields of the simple cells in the primary visual cortex. Twenty front-view facial images form twenty persons were used for the training process, and 200 varied facial images, 20 per person, were used for test. The correct recognition rate was 100% for only the front-view test facial images, which include the images either with spectacles or of various expressions, while it was 90% in average for the total input images that include rotated faces. We analyzed the effect of nonlinear functon that determine the sparseness, and compared recognition rate using the sparese population code with that using eigenvectors (eigenfaces), which is compact code that makes contrast with the sparse population code.