Abstract. This is the first section of the review--tutorial paper describing fundamentals of tissue optics and photonics mostly devoted to biological tissue structures and their specificity related to light interactions at its propagation in tissues. The next sections of the paper will describe light--tissue interactions caused by tissue dispersion, scattering, and absorption properties, including light reflection and refraction, absorption, elastic quasi--elastic and inelastic scattering. The major tissue absorbers and types of elastic scattering, including Rayleigh and Mie scattering, will be presented. © 2015 Samara State Aerospace University (SSAU).Keywords: biophotonics; tissue optics; tissue structures. C. J. Gemert (eds.), Academic, NY (1992 Digest 11, 191-199 (1990 Hodson, "Transparency of the bovine corneal stroma at physiological hydration and its dependence on concentration of the ambient anion," J. Physiol. 543, 633-642 (2002). 85. K. M. Meek, S. Dennis, and S. Khan, "Changes in the refractive index of the stroma and its extrafibrillar matrix when the cornea swells," Biophys. J. 85, 2205-2212 (2003). 86. H. Schaefer, and T. E. Redelmeier, Skin Barrier: Principles of Percutaneous Absorption, Karger, Basel (1996). (7), 375-416 (2014). 104. E. I. Galanzha, M. S. Kokoska, E. V. Shashkov, J.-W. Kim, V. V. Tuchin, and V. P. Zharov, "In vivo fiber photoacoustic detection and photothermal purging of metastasis targeted by nanoparticles in sentinel lymph nodes at single cell level," J.