This gallery contains 33 photos.
Outside looking in, the glazed facade of Brighton’s premier flea market, Snoopers Paradise (“Snoopers”), projects domestic objects right into the street. Close-up window-shopping is only possible out of hours when external stalls have been packed away, but it draws people … Continue reading
Snoopers Paradise Exterior: Photo by Lisa Båtsvik-Miller
Snoopers Paradise Interior: Photo by Lisa Båtsvik-Miller
Snoopers Paradise
Kensington Gardens
Brighton, East Sussex
Photographed on 14 January 2016
Frequent visits since 2001
Snoopers Paradise is an indoor flea market made up of over fifty individual stalls, varying in size from one IKEA display cabinet to fully-individuated and merchandised “corners”. The stalls sell a mixture of old and new goods, some handcrafted others mass-manufactured, from around the world and across the centuries. From jewellery to furniture, ephemera and books, china and glass, fashion and accessories, from toys to art and that catch-all, the “collectible”.
The building was once a department store; when I was an undergraduate living in Brighton I remember it selling household goods, the sort of cookers and chests of drawers that furnished student houses back in the 1980s. The history of how it morphed into a paradise for snoopers is a little mysterious and depends on who’s telling it.
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