‘All I wore was my camera strap’: David Hurn’s best photograph

‘This was the Isle of Wight music festival in 1969. We had started to smell and had gone down to the sea to get clean. To do that, you have to take your clothes off. It seemed perfectly natural’

Early in my career, I realised that having a well-numbered archive with clear captions was something that would bring in an income for ever. I realised, too, that it was a good idea to go out and photograph unique subjects: the biggest, the smallest, things that were about to disappear. When you’re the only person who has photographed something that has been and gone, that gives you an enormous advantage when people want images of it in the future.

So whenever I heard of something that fitted that category, I’d trot off and photograph it. If someone wanted to publish the photographs at the time, great. But at the back of my mind was always the thought: “This is really for the future.” And that was the case when I attended the Isle of Wight festivals, all three, in 1968, 69 and 70. I knew I’d get some pictures – but of course it was also great fun.