Troubles of the brain

When a form includes files, the serialize() method on a form element is not going to help you.
The serialize() method serializes a form to json, but all file inputs are not included.
The trick is to use FormData.

var jqueryForm = $("form");
var formAsHtmlElement = jqueryForm[0];
var formData = new FormData(formAsHtmlElement);

The form data can be posted as follows

$.ajax({
    type: form.attr("method"),
    url: form.attr("action"),
    data: formData,
    cache: false,
    contentType: false,
    processData: false,
    success: function (data) {
        ....
    }
});

The contentType and processData are very important. This treats the data as “multipart/form-data”.